The Last Samurai

        The Last Samurai opens with a series of land- and seascapes showing the natural beauty of Japan, while serene, vaguely Oriental music plays, then intercuts the serenity with brief scenes of frenetic Samurai warfare and a prowling tiger as the music intensifies to the title.
        One of those landscapes recurs near the end of the film, during a lull in the climactic battle – only now, hundreds of corpses cover the rolling green hillside and billowing smoke fills the sky. It is a truly Romantic image: modernity has made ugly that which nature had made beautiful.
        Two centuries of popular culture have conditioned us to respond positively to the Romantic notion that the past (rural, natural, traditional) is better than the present/future (urban, artificial, “progressive”). Thus, even as we sit in the technological marvel of a 21st-century movie theatre, we root for the doomed representatives of a past that few of us would want to inhabit.
        Director Edward Zwick (Glory) pushes the Romantic buttons in his glorious epic about late-19th-century imperial Japan, in which the rage for the modern threatens and ultimately defeats the medieval warrior class of the Samurai. Although we know how it will end, still we hope the Samurai will find a way to escape their historical irrelevancy.
        At the center of the action is Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise), a Civil War hero reduced to performing in a trick-shooting show while drowning his memories in drink. Hired for $500 a month to train the Japanese army in modern methods of warfare, Algren muses with cynical irony about his destiny as the hired killer of “rebellious tribes” of “savages” – first the Plains Indians, now the Samurai.
        His tortured memories of atrocities he and others committed in attacking peaceful Indian villages and the duplicity of the “modern” Japanese leadership demonstrate just who the real savages are. Algren hates his mercenary position, but has no place to turn but the bottle, and the possibility of an early and welcome death.
        The transformation from modern Western cavalry officer to ancient Samurai warrior begins after Algren is captured in battle. His clear bravery impels the he enemy commander, Yatsumoto (Ken Watanabe), to spare him and to bring him to the Samurai’s winter mountain retreat so that he can study his enemy.
        The contrasting settings of Tokyo and the mountain village provide compelling emblems of a society in transition: Tokyo crowded and noisy, with telegraph wires crisscrossing the sky and citizens arrayed in everything from full-fledge Western suit and tie to traditional Japanese robes; the village peaceful and serene, where life proceeds at a measured pace.
        In the remote Japanese village, Algren sobers up under the care of Yatsumoto’s sister, Taka (Koyuki), whose husband Algren had killed in the battle. The narrative logic of the film sets up an eventual romance between Taka and Algren, but the romance is muted and not well developed. A few meaningful glances show her growing affection for Algren, culminating in the gift of her husband’s armor for his use in the final battle.
        Everything leads up to that epic battle scene – lyrically photographed images of Cruise practicing with the Japanese sword, the increasing tension between the traditional-minded Samurai leader and the modernizing Japanese court, the almost ritualistic dressing of Algren in Samurai armor. The battle scenes are terrific, revealing the chaos and terror of modern weapons being deployed against a medieval fighting force.
        Of course, the Samurai forces are shredded by the howitzers and Gatling guns brought against them. The triumph of modernity is assured, but nostalgia for the lost Samurai remains.
        Tom Cruise’s performance as Algren is solid and satisfying, but the real revelation is Watanabe as Katsumoto. His screen presence is incredible, and he dominates just about every scene in which he appears. Alternately a sophisticated man of the world (with impeccable English), a gallant warrior, and a pious Buddhist adherent, he embodies everything that the Samurai once stood for.
        Alas, there is no room for the Samurai in the new Japan that is emerging at the time of the action.In the end, Katsumoto fittingly dies in cherry blossom time, finally seeing the perfect blossom that he has searched for in his more peaceful interludes. The movie should perhaps have ended with this battlefield death, but there is a brief conclusion in which Algren (the only survivor from the Samurai side!) appears before the emperor to re-instill some of the old Samurai pride in the Japanese leadership.