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Get Criterion's US disc for a fine presentation of the uncut version of Kurosawa's comeback
After years in the wilderness ended only when Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas persuaded 20th Century Fox to invest some of the money they'd made from Star Wars in his financially stalled epic, Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha was one of those real life fairy tales that you feel bad for not liking more. It's a film with good things in it and the odd great moment, but despite having a good story to tell and the budget to do it justice it never really comes to life. The tale of a thief whose uncanny resemblance to a warlord leads to him assuming his role after his death to prevent his kingdom falling apart and slowly gaining both the admiration and unease of those who use him over his alternately inspired or disastrous improvisation in the role itself tends to feel like a convincing imitation rather than the genuine article. A big part of the reason is that the characters never come to life thanks to a script that's thin on character and a performance by Tatsuya Nakadai that's more than competent but feels like it's had the life directed out of it. Kurosawa originally cast Shintaro Katsu, the larger than life star of the Lone Wolf and Cub and Hanzo the Razor films, only to fire him in rehearsals over what he saw as a lack of respect and, as Coppola suggests on one of the interviews on Criterion's DVD and Blu-ray, that was probably what the part needed instead of Nakadai's quieter, more contained but all too often near-anonymous performance. Throughout he seems kept at arm's length, observing events but never allowed to take centre stage until near the end of the film.
The film's other big problem is it's pacing. For international consumption Fox cut the film by some 20 minutes from its original Japanese version (losing Takashi Shimura's brief last role for the director entirely), and you can understand the reason for the cuts - the first hour is at times almost stultifyingly slow, the Noh Theatre influence resulting in scenes that aren't just slow and studied as positively glacier-like in their pacing: the opening shot runs for several minutes in an unbroken stationary shot, and it's far from an isolated example. Yet as a result when the film does explode into movement, such as the mud-covered messenger waking sleeping troops as he runs to deliver his news or when the shadow warrior improvises a rousing ride-by to rally 'his' troops only to fall from his horse, the contrast gives them much more impact.
While it's not top tier Kurosawa by a long way, it's not entirely negligible either. There's an especially bold use of vivid colour, even going into outright stylisation in the watercolour-like nightmare sequence, and the justly celebrated final battle sequence that defies expectations has real impact: it's the one part of the film where Kurosawa's emphasis on technique over character actually provokes a genuine emotional response, though it is telling that you feel more for the mass of victims that we've never met than the main character who carries the film. There are enough moments of pure cinema to carry it over the rough spots, but it feels more like a bit of a miss than the triumphant comeback critics hailed it as back in 1980.
Fox's original European PAL DVD was a real dogs dinner of a release, offering only the cut version in an exceptionally grainy and muted transfer that did a grave disservice to Takao Saito and Shoji Ueda's fine cinematography (no extras either), but Criterion's US DVD and Region A-locked Blu-ray offer the uncut three hour Japanese version in a very pleasing transfer. It's also accompanied by a slew of extras: audio commentary by Stephen Prince, five Suntory Whisky commercials shot on the set alternately showing Kurosawa and Coppola sharing a glass or the director talking to the extras or inspecting prop helmets before downing a glass; a 43-minute reconstruction of the story through Kurosawa's concept paintings that was edited by actor Masayuki Yui, who plays Ieyasu Tokugawa in the film; a comparison of some of those paintings to frames from the finished film; 19-minute interview with Lucas and Coppola; a 43-minute retrospective documentary that's part of Toho's It Is Wonderful to Create series of Kurosawa documentaries; and the US and two Japanese trailers with some footage of Kurosawa at work.
