Sunday, December 03, 2023
Harakiri
- Commentary: Under construction.
I am sooo looking forward to the arrival of this film! I've seen it once before, when I lived in Sacramento in the early 80s. It was a bad print with no subtitles (either Japanese or English) and I wasn't going to go to the screening for these reasons, but my Asian Film friends encouraged me, anyway, saying that I would not miss anything by not understanding the speech in it. They were half right, and half wrong. The story is clear without speech. The characterizations are, hmmm, well, relatively clear. The relationships even less clear. So I'm very excited to be adding this to my collection. I feel as though I am finally going to be experiencing the impact of this film the way an astute viewer and appreciator of Japanese film should be doing.
By the way, at Roger Ebert's website, when you search for this movie, more than a few articles discussing it appear. My intention is to read all the articles. In addition, Roger Ebert christened this as one of his Great Movies.
Actor Role Actor Role Actor Role Actor Role Tatsuya Nakadai Tsugumo Hanshirō Rentarō Mikuni Saitō Kageyu Akira Ishihama Chijiiwa Motome Shima Iwashita Tsugumo Miho Tetsurō Tamba Omodaka Hikokuro Ichirō Nakatani Yazaki Hayato Masao Mishima Inaba Tango Kei Satō Fukushima Masakatsu
Here's a link to the Wikipedia write-up of the film.
Release Date: 1962
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi.
Labels: Criterion7, samurai
