☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½
Hara-Kiri
(1962) – M. Kobayashi
Kobayashi’s film feels like a horror
film or at the very least a potently grim fable. Told mostly in flashback by Tatsuya Nakadai,
a masterless samurai, who has turned up at the castle of the Ii clan, asking
permission to commit ritual suicide to end his miserable life. The stark black and white serves only to
highlight the stark coldness of the feudal system and its unfeeling code of
honour (that may be really just a front for authoritarians who take pleasure in
sadistic treatment of underlings, or so Kobayashi seems to be implying). As his story progresses, Nakadai’s samurai
gradually reveals his hand, undermining the moral rectitude of the clan that
has put on such airs of superiority. Of
course, the film crescendos with violence and ends very bleakly. In 2012, Miike Takashi remade the film in
colour and 3D but that version seems almost pointless in its close
transcription of the powerful and gripping original. Unbearably tense.
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