The Last Samurai
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This article is about the film; for Helen DeWitt's novel, see The Last Samurai (novel)
| The Last Samurai | |
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 Promotional Poster |
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| Directed by | Edward Zwick |
| Produced by | Tom Cruise Tom Engleman Marshall Herskovitz Scott Kroopf Paula Wagner Edward Zwick |
| Written by | Story: John Logan Screenplay: John Logan and Edward Zwick & Marshall Herskovitz |
| Starring | Tom Cruise Timothy Spall Ken Watanabe Billy Connolly Tony Goldwyn Hiroyuki Sanada Koyuki |
| Music by | Hans Zimmer |
| Cinematography | John Toll |
| Editing by | Victor Du Bois Steven Rosenblum |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | December 5, 2003 |
| Running time | 154 minutes |
| Language | English Japanese French |
| Budget | $100 million USD |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Last Samurai is an action/drama film written by John Logan and Edward Zwick & Marshall Herskovitz based on a story by Logan. This movie was directed by Edward Zwick that was released in the United States on December 5, 2003. The plot deals with American soldier Nathan Algren (played by Tom Cruise) whose personal and emotional conflicts bring him into contact with samurai in the wake of the Meiji Restoration in the Empire of Japan between 1876 and 1877.
The film's plot is loosely based on the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion led by Saigō Takamori, and also on the story of Jules Brunet, a French army captain who fought alongside Enomoto Takeaki in the Boshin War. The historical roles in Japanese westernization by the United Kingdom, Germany and France are largely attributed to the United States in the film, and characters in the film and the real story are simplified for plot purposes. While it is not an accurate source of historical information, the film illustrates some major issues in Japanese history.
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[edit] Plot
Captain Nathan Algren, a disenchanted ex-United States Army captain (once under the command of George Armstrong Custer and a veteran of the Battle of Gettysburg), is tortured by the guilt of his past transgressions against Native American civilians. He is recruited to help the new Meiji Restoration government train its first Western-style army.
Algren trains an army of peasants and farmers in firearm techniques, and takes them into battle against a group of samurai rebels led by Katsumoto. In the battle, the samurai outfight Algren's poorly-trained soldiers, and Algren is captured. Algren, after killing one of the samurai himself, is taken as a prisoner to an isolated village, where he gradually recovers from his wounds. He lives with the family of the samurai he killed, namely his widow Taka, her two sons and Katsumoto's son Nobutada. Algren learns swordplay from a skilled swordmaster and converses with the local residents.
With the arrival of spring, Nathan is taken back to Tokyo, where he learns that the army is now organized better and outfitted with Howitzer cannons and Gatling guns. He declines the Japanese government's job offer. He also witnesses the brutality of the Japanese soldiers who enforce the new laws forbidding samurai to publicly carry swords and wear their hair in long queues ("chonmage").
The samurai leader Katsumoto is arrested, but Algren rescues him. During the rescue mission, Nobutada is killed. A force of swordsmen and warriors is built up and Algren receives a katana of his own. He is also given, by Taka, the armor of the samurai he killed. The samurai plan, with the assistance of Algren, is to make their final stand.
When a large Japanese army confronts the samurai's forces to put down the rebellion, the samurai archers unleash their arrows on the infantrymen, killing many. The samurai swordsmen, Algren and Katsumoto amongst them, charge a second large unit of infantry and then charge the massed ranks of the enemy army. After a savage battle that leaves many samurai and infantrymen dead, the surviving samurai resolve to make a final charge. They charge through the infantry, only to be cut down by Gatling guns the soldiers had brought with them. Katsumoto, obeying bushido in order to keep his honour, commits seppuku (ceremonial samurai suicide), ending his life. The Emperor's soldiers, many of whose comrades have also been killed, show their respect by bowing to the fallen samurai.
Later, as American ambassadors prepare to have the emperor sign a treaty that would give the US exclusive rights to sell firearms to the Japanese government, an injured Algren urges the emperor to turn away the American ambassadors' offer. Algren then supposedly returns to the samurai village where he was imprisoned earlier, and to Taka.
[edit] Cast
- Tom Cruise as Captain Nathan Algren, a Civil War and Indian Wars veteran haunted by a massacre of Native American civilians.
- Ken Watanabe as samurai Lord Katsumoto, a warrior-poet who was once Emperor Meiji's most trusted teacher. He is displeased with Mr. Omura's bureaucratic reform policies which leads him into organising a revolt against the Imperial Army.
- Masato Harada as Omura, an industrialist and pro-reform politician who despises the samurai. Coming from a family that like many merchants was repressed during the days of Samurai rule, he assumes a great deal of power during the Meiji Restoration and takes advantages of Meiji's youth to become his chief advisor (wielding power similar to those of the Shoguns).
- Shichinosuke Nakamura as Emperor Meiji. Credited with the implementation of the 1868 Meiji Restoration, the Emperor is eager to import Western ideas and practices to modernize and empower Japan to become a strong nation.
- Hiroyuki Sanada as Ujio, one of the most dedicated and vicious samurai under Katsumoto. He teaches Algren the art of Samurai swordfighting.
- Timothy Spall as Simon Graham, a British translator for Captain Algren and his non-Japanese speaking soldiers. Initially portrayed as a typical practical-minded Englishman, he later comes to understand the Samurai cause.
- Shin Koyamada as Nobutada, Katsumoto's only son who is lord of the village that the Samurai are encamped in.
- Seizo Fukumoto as the Silent Samurai, an elderly man assigned to follow Algren as he travels through the village.
- Koyuki as Taka, Katsumoto's sister and the wife of the red-masked Samurai Hirotoro.
- Billy Connolly as Sergeant Zebulon Gant, a former cavalry soldier who served with Algren and talked him into coming to Japan. He is later killed in the opening battle by Hirotoro (Taka's husband).
- Tony Goldwyn as Colonel Bagley, Capt. Algren's commanding officer in the 7th Cavalry Regiment, who was to train the Imperial Army.
[edit] Reception
The film received an enthusiastic reception among the moviegoing public in Japan, with box office receipts higher in that country than in the USA. [1] Critical reception in Japan was generally positive. Tomomi Katsuta of The Mainichi Shimbun thought that the film was "a vast improvement over previous American attempts to portray Japan", noting that director Ed Zwick "had researched Japanese history, cast well-known Japanese actors and consulted dialogue coaches to make sure he didn't confuse the casual and formal categories of Japanese speech." However, Katsuta still found fault with the film's idealistic, "storybook" portrayal of the samurai, stating that "Our image of samurai are that they were more corrupt." As such, he said, the noble samurai leader Katsumoto "set (his) teeth on edge." [2]
Reviews were harsher in the United States. Motoko Rich of The New York Times observed that the film has opened up a debate, "particularly among Asian-Americans and Japanese," about whether the film and others like it were "racist, naïve, well-intentioned, accurate — or all of the above." [3] Tom Long, critic for The Detroit News, wrote that "The Last Samurai pretends to honor a culture, but all it's really interested in is cheap sentiment, big fights and, above all, star worship. It is a sham, and further, a shame." Critic Nathaniel R of the film review website The Film Experience observed:
On the one hand the film asks you to cheer on the death of imperialistic Americans (as played by Tony Goldwyn) who seek to westernize everything. On the other it asks you to worship imperialistic Americans (Cruise) who appropriate other cultures and help the natives to value themselves. The white man as savior to savages is an old imperialistic and racist concept and it's dusted off here in the service of a film that ostensibly asks you to despise that very notion. So in the end, The Last Samurai is either a deeply subversive film or a terribly misguided one. The evidence tilts toward the latter, I'm afraid. [4]
Reviewer Todd McCarthy from Variety calls The Last Samurai “ rich in period and historical background,” a “physically impressive” film with costumes that are “rich in eye-catching detail but not self-consciously exotic.” However, he states that the film is “deficient in fresh dramatic and thematic ideas,” and that the end of the movie “feel[s] phony and tacked on as a contrived sop to conventional audience expectations.” [5]
Other actors have displayed some bitterness at having missed their chance to be cast as Captain Algren. Most notably, Steven Seagal stated: "I was raised in Japan. I was schooled in martial arts. I was given the title of master. They take a movie The Last Samurai. They have a five foot two inch little guy, whether he was straight or gay, I don't know. I don't care. He had never been to Japan. He doesn't speak Japanese. He has never held a sword. They make him the last samurai. [6]"
[edit] Soundtrack
Composed by Hans Zimmer, the score for The Last Samurai makes use of traditional Japanese instrumentation and compositional techniques, as well as the Western equivalent. The Taiko drum features prominently in the action cues. Vocal shouts and chants are featured in the "Red Warrior" cue. The score was nominated for several awards, including a Golden Globe (Best Original Score), and won an ASCAP award.
[edit] Track Listing
- A Way of Life
- Spectres in the Fog
- Taken
- A Hard Teacher
- To Know My Enemy
- Idyll's End
- Safe Passage
- Ronin
- Red Warrior
- The Way of the Sword
- A Small Measure of Peace
- The End of the beginning
[edit] Miscellaneous
- Although many of the film's cast members are Japanese, the production crew is almost entirely American, and most of the movie was filmed in New Zealand.
- The shots shown of Mount Fuji are actually shots of Mount Taranaki, in New Zealand.
- Several of the village scenes were shot on the Warner Brothers Studios backlot in Burbank, CA.
- In major battle scenes, one notices a golden, circular ring painted on Ujio's black armor. This could be a reference to Ujio's actor Hiroyuki Sanada's starring role in Ringu.
[edit] Historical perspective
The Last Samurai combines real but disconnected historical situations, rather distant in time, into a single narrative. It also replaces the key Western actors of the period (especially the French) by American ones. Finally, it portrays a radical conflict between ancient and modern fighting methods, but in reality all sides of the conflict (the Satsuma rebellion, and before it the Boshin War) adopted modern equipment to various degrees.
[edit] Military modernization and Western involvement
The kind of military modernization described in The Last Samurai was already largely achieved by the time of the Boshin War ten years before, in 1868. At that time, forces favourable to the Shogun were modernized and trained by the French Military Mission to Japan (1867), and a modern fleet of steam warships had already been constituted (Eight steam warships, Kaiten, Banryū, Chiyodagata, Chōgei, Kaiyō Maru, Kanrin Maru, Mikaho and Shinsoku formed the core of the Bakufu Navy in 1868). The Western fiefs of Satsuma and Chōshū were also already highly modernized, supported by British interests and expertise. Even the appearance of Gatling guns in Japan goes back to that time (the Gatling guns were invented in 1861, and deployed during the 1868-1869 Boshin War by both sides, at the Battle of Hokuetsu and the Naval Battle of Miyako). Modernization had already advanced at a fast pace during the Bakumatsu period, many years before the installation of the Meiji Emperor.
Although Commodore Perry is credited with opening Japan to foreign contacts in 1854, American involvement in Japan was minimal thereafter, partly due to the demands of the American Civil War (1861-1865). The main powers involved with the modernization of Japan up to the 1868 Meiji Restoration were Holland (initiation of a modern navy with the Nagasaki Naval Training Center and the supply of Japan's first modern ships, the Kankō Maru and the Kanrin Maru), France (Construction of the arsenal of Yokosuka by Léonce Verny, the 1867 French Military Mission), and Great Britain (in supplying modern equipment, especially ships, to a variety of domains).
[edit] Westerners fighting alongside Japanese
Historically, the only major case of foreigners taking an active role in a Japanese civil war is that of the French military advisers under Jules Brunet (initially members of the 1867 French Military Mission), who joined the forces favourable to the Shogun under Enomoto Takeaki, during the Boshin war. They were deeply involved in the military organization of the Shogunal forces, and fought (several of them were heavily wounded) almost to end of the conflict. A few days before surrender, when the situation had become desperate, they left on the French frigate Coëtlogon which had been waiting at anchor in Hakodate. Some of these French officers did wear the samurai attire (such as the French Naval officer Eugène Collache), although most officers in the armies of the Bakufu, as well as of course their French colleagues, wore French military uniforms.
[edit] The Satsuma rebellion
The Satsuma Rebellion, the historical event described in The Last Samurai, was even more one-sided than in the movie, although the military techniques employed by each side were less contrasted. It occurred in 1877, ten years after the Boshin War, and ten years after the establishment of the Imperial Japanese army. The Imperial troops sent a huge force of 300,000 soldiers under Kawamura Sumiyoshi, modern in all aspects of warfare, using howitzers and observations balloons, to the island of Kyūshū to fight Saigō Takamori.
Saigō Takamori's rebels numbered around 40,000 in total, until they dwindled to about 400 at the final stand at the Battle of Shiroyama. Although they fought for the preservation of the caste of the samurai, and officers often wore samurai cuirasses, they did not neglect Western military methods: they used guns and cannons, and all contemporary depictions of Saigō Takamori represent him wearing the uniform of a Western general. At the end of the conflict, running out of material and ammunition, they had to fall back to close-quarter tactics and the use of swords, bows and arrows. In a parallel to the movie, they also fought for a more virtuous form of government (their slogan was "新政厚徳", "New government, High morality").
In contrast to the Boshin War, no Westerners are recorded to have fought on either side of the Satsuma rebellion. Specifically, Saigō Takamori did not fight side-by-side with foreign soldiers during the Satsuma Rebellion. During the Boshin War, Saigō may have been supported by British and American military advisors,[7] but the only documented case of foreigners actually fighting for a Japanese cause was that of the French soldiers supporting Enomoto Takeaki.
[edit] Notes
- ^ [1]
- ^ [2]
- ^ [3]
- ^ [4]
- ^ http://www.variety.com/ac2004_review/VE1117922542?nav=reviews&categoryid=1657&cs=1
- ^ Ed Condran. "The Steven Seagal interview", The Steven Seagal interview, 2006-06-13. Retrieved on 2006-06-13.
- ^ This is a claim made by Jules Brunet in a letter to Napoleon III: "I must signal to the Emperor the presence of numerous American and British officers, retired or on leave, in this party [of the southern Daimyos] which is hostile to French interests. The presence of Occidental chiefs among our enemies may jeopardize my success from a political standpoint, but nobody can stop me from bringing to Your Majesty information she will without a doubt find interesting." in "Soie et Lumiere", p81 (French)
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Official website
- The Last Samurai at the Internet Movie Database
- The Last Samurai at Rotten Tomatoes
- The Last Samurai at Box Office Mojo
- The Last Samurai at Tom Cruise Online.com
