WI Film Fest 2011: 13 Assassins

My 2011 Wisconsin Film Festival began last night with Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins at the Orpheum.

The film is based on an episode of history and is a remake of a 1963 film of the same name. Not having seen the original, I'm not sure exactly how it differs but I'm guessing the original did not have such gory sound effects during its scenes of hara-kiri nor 45 minutes of total massacre replete with flaming cows.

It is 1844 and the era of feudal Japan is coming to a close. Peace has reigned for many years and the samurai have not seen combat for some time. They have been serving their lords in other, less bellicose ways. Against this backdrop the movie begins with one of Lord Doi's vassals, Mamiya, committing hara-kiri. We don't see the blade go in. Instead Miike keeps the camera on Mamiya's facial contortions while the soundtrack puts the slicing and gut wrenching on full volume. This act of desperation was prompted by Lord Naritsugu who has been made next in line for the Shogunate by his half-brother. Naritsugu is a sociopath who has been raping and killing his way to the top. Things will not be good for Japan should be become Shogun.

The current Shogun wishes to avoid anything public and so he directs Lord Doi to dispose of Naritsugu in a more clandestine way. Doi recruits Shinzaemon Shimada, a samurai of great experience, to undertake the mission. We watch as Shinzaemon recruits 11 others for the job and get to see Naritsugu's cruelty first hand. For instance, he raped the daughter-in-law of another lord and murdered the man's son. In a wonderfully disturbing scene, Doi brings in a kimono-clad woman. She cries as Doi tells Shimada of her fate at Lord Naritsugu's hands. Servants remove the kimono to reveal that her arms and legs are stubs. Shimada asks the woman what happened to her family but she doesn't respond. Doi tells him that Naritsugu cut out her tongue. Servants place paper before her and a paint brush in her mouth. She orally scrawls out "TOTAL MASSACRE" before letting out a blood-curdling scream.

Shinzaemon chooses to ambush Naritsugu at the town of Ochlai as the lord will be making a trek to visit his clan. Naritsugu has a samurai named Hanbei in his employ and he and Shinzaemon go back many years as they trained to become samurai together. And so Shinzaemon's plan becomes something of a game of cat and mouse with each of the aging samurai making their moves based on the knowledge of his old foe. The 12 assassins take a shortcut through the forest and stumble upon the thirteenth assassin in the guise of a crazy mountain man named Koyata.

The assassins turn the town into a trap for Hanbei and his lord who have called in reinforcements which bolster their numbers to 200 from the previous 70. As I said above, the 13 assassins take on these 200 troops over the course of 45 minutes. Ochlai has been booby-trapped with explosives, outfitted with these horizontal portcullises made of branches, and, generally speaking, turned into a labyrinth of death. If being separated by the gates and picked off with arrows from above wasn't bad enough, Hanbei's men also suffer the indignity of being trampled by flaming cows. For his last stand Shinzaemon throws in everything but the kitchen sink but he and his men eventually get down to business with their katanas.

Noticeably absent was CGI. OK, there may have been some slight alterations but I couldn't pick anything out. Miike seems to have gone completely the old fashioned route with real people acting out choreographed stunts. Also notable was that Miike and his editor Kenji Yamashita avoided the J.J. Abrams/Zack Snyder/Paul Greengrass method of over editing. I'd bet that even the action shots here last longer than the exposition shots in Star Trek, 300, or any of Greengrass' Bourne movies. What a relief to see a film that doesn't cut every second on the second. During the fight sequences you can actually see what people are doing. Not just the warriors in the foreground but also those behind them or on scaffolds above. You actually get a sense of where the characters are in the space of the town and in relation to one another.

Shinzaemon and Hanbei have it out in the end. Two old warriors giving their all for one last shot at glory. It reminded me of The Wild Bunch a bit. Hanbei sticks with tradition which dictates that a samurai obeys his lord above all else while Shinzaemon feels the winds of change and carves out his duties in relation to the good of the people.

Stop reading here if you're spoiler-averse because I'm going to lay one out, although it's fairly minor.

The crazy guy they met up with in the woods – Koyata – proves himself to be a good fighter, oddly enough, considering that his main role initially was to provide comic relief. At the end he meets up with Hanbei and Naritsugu. Koyata's monologue on the uselessness of samurai is rudely interrupted by Naritsugu's short sword which pierces his neck. I thought Koyata was done for but he reappears at the very end. I have this peculiar feeling I'm missing something by not being Japanese or not knowing Japanese legends. Was his character meant to be like that of a Japanese Loki? Or perhaps his reappearance was a hallucination.