Zatoichi - Fun

This movie is as awesome as the summer of TRL which featured daily battles between NSync, BSB, Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock. I used to come home from work just to watch the top three vids with this guy that lived in my basement that summer (he was supposed to be going door-to-door selling children's books but all he did was rock out really hard and watch TRL; he knew the dances to Bye Bye Bye, and I want it That way; he was tight).

For real though, this movie is great. I don't know how many samurai movies I have seen but it is a substantial number. The only one that I can ever remember the name of is 'Seven Samurai'. I think this is because I don't speak Japanese and because many of these movies are all quite similar. Zatoichi, however, I will definitely remember and I will name drop it, no doubt. Seeing this movie makes you cooler than everyone else. I can already tell though that when I name drop this movie during film society pub night everyone is going to be all like, "dude, I saw that movie at Cannes in like 94." But, I'll claim that it is still awesome.

The way I see it, there are two ways to make a samurai movie. 1) Make an epic archetypal that encompasses universal appeals to the human condition and societal views on justice and honor or 2) make a cut-em-up blood bath with a tragic (or non-tragic) hero that just destroys everyone and everything. This is a fine line and obviously many samurai movies fall into both categories but I think ultimately this is a good line of demarcation. At least, I think samurai movies would be better if they chose one of the two paths (i.e. Twilight Samurai vs. Kill Bill; I think both are great because they chose a path).

Zatoichi, however, is different; transcendental I might say. I mean we are talking about taking an icon of the Samurai industry (Zatoichi is an epic character that has been made and re-made a bunch of times in Samurai film) and putting him inside a comedy/musical. What a great idea? It makes one question the placing of Japan in the 'east' as opposed to the 'west'. I feel like a really good scholarly article, at least one I would think is cool, would talk about how Japanese cinema relegates the classification of an 'eastern' nation and resolutely claims, "We are are not and forever will be western." And then a cool follow up article, (like, if I am a friend of the dude that wrote this first article, I would cite his article so that he gets some dough stacks for being cited and write a second article) would be about how Japanese cinema doesn't care about the classification of 'western' or 'eastern' because it just wants to be 'Japanese'. But then again this may be to pomo for it's own good. But then again, Japan might totally dig this idea and make a movie about this idea.

At any rate, Zatoichi chronicles the several days that a blind samurai master spends amongst some villagers that are being held in economic captivity by an oppressive gangster. He decides that this is not cool so he takes out the gangsters. He kills quickly which is welcomed as most samurai fights were probably pretty quick with very little steel hitting steel. There are some cool shout outs to 'Seven Samurai' and a lot of great dialogue. Ultimately though, this movie ends in a dance sequence. I didn't like 'Slumdog Millionaire' until the dancing. I liked this movie before the dancing which means I loved the movie after the dancing. I guess I just love some choreographed dancing; I owe this to me being brought up on season tickets to Broadway shows and The Sound of Music.

I highly recommend this movie. I'm going to watch it again.