March 9th, 2010 
cello85 
Yojimbo is a film I’ve been meaning to see for close to a decade now and finally got around (I know, I know…) to watching it as it is finally getting the blu-ray treatment here in the states. As it borrowed from the American movie western, so did it influence American film in return, most obviously in the form of the popular Clint Eastwood westerns of the 1970s and then remade as A Fistful of Dollars. Many people consider Yojimbo to be among Kurosawa’s best film. However, the serio-comic approach didn’t work entirely for me. I did not connect with it the way I did with other great films by the director. Still, this highly enjoyable period piece is not only a classic story but a view into Japanese cultural heritage. Yojimbo means bodyguard. It is the 1860’s and out-of-work samurai wander the country.
As hostilities escalate, there’s all sorts of conniving and backhanded maneuvering from everyone involved, with occasional breaks for Sanjuro to slice and dice whatever poor folks get in the way of his objectives. The source of all this conflict is because commerce is at a virtual stop and the factions of two local bosses are fighting each other for dominion. While the basic themes of this story are not unique, many factors add an interesting and unusual charm to this film.
I personally have some difficulty keeping track of which characters are aligned with which of the two warring factions, and that becomes difficult when the rival groups start exchanging prisoners and whatnot. Whilst the movie wasn’t as fast-paced as modern rendition, it’s still an entertaining movie to watch. It’s even more intriguing to see how much movie making has progressed over the years. These things are what made Kurosawa such a celebrated filmmaker, he makes you pay attention to his simple visuals and trains the viewer to read between the lines. The film has some nicely choreographed bits of swordplay but it isn’t anything too flashy or extravagant.
Like I said before, the humor was a big turn off for me. While very little is explictly humorous, Kurosawa has a way of deriving very subtle black humor from the horror of the situation itself, and the very small extent to which most people are fazed by that horror. Another small gripe, which keeps Yojimbo from reaching a perfect score, is a lot of space is taken up by unimportant conversations, which aren’t redeemed by an exceptionally realistic ear for dialogue. Especially considering its bleak import, it doesn’t seem to have earned the right to go on for so long, but it’s still a very good film. This has been a very influential film and it deserves to be. Just because I don’t hold it as high in regards as alot of other critics doesn’t mean this film is any less powerful. This is not Kurosawa’s best film, but it is still a classic, and I highly recommend this to fans of Japanese or Samurai films, and anyone who appreciates world cinema.
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Man, even the trailer for that film seemed very slow. I don’t know if I could manage to make it through that one.
The first time I watched this I found it rather slow, and at times a bit difficult to track, but with repeat viewings it’s just gotten better and better with time.
Well you fail to mention that Yojimbo was made before the modern action film. If you compare it to the Westerns of the time or even Steve McQueen its paced about the same. And on top of that it was remade like 3 or 4 times since. All I can think of is “Fistful of Dollars”, “Last man standing” and an anime version called “Kaze no Stigma”. One must also remember that Samurai movies tend to be slow in general and more about the suffering of the characters for what they believe in.
Yojimbo is without doubt Kurosawa’s masterpiece. Rashomon is a treatise on truth and perspective, Dodes is about family in dystopia, Ran is homage to Shakespearean tragedy, Dreams and Desu are pure cinematographic romps, and Ikiru is a sprawling essay on life itself, but Yojimbo (along with, and to an extent the Seven Samurai) is the quintessential Kurosawa movie that reeks of “Japaneseness”, and its worth and merits can only be comprehended and appreciated by those who have at least a passing acquaintance with Japanese culture, history, social mores, and the particularly Japanese notion of masculine honor.
At one level Yojimbo can be viewed as a masterfully simple satire on the cold war, no less trenchant than Kubrick’s Strangelove, at another, between the tensions that were to arise between the Tokugawa and Meiji periods, at another between east and west (symbolized by the sword and firearm), and last but not least it can be regarded simply as a rip-roaring samurai swashbuckler romp. It succeeds on all these levels, and makes its point crisply, and with humor and seamless cinematic narrative.
In the beginning Mifune’s character (hilariously named Kuwabatake Sanjuro), the Mulberry Field thirty-something pushing at forty, is just that – a masterless ronin samurai, worldly-wise and cynical, without moorings, without purpose, without loyalties, a skilled wandering mercenary warrior in a midlife crisis quite happy to sell his skills to the highest bidder. Kurosawa brings out Sanjuro’s personality in one brief shot right at the beginning – contrasting his nervous shoulder twitch with the steadiness of the mountain range in front. The storied samurai ethos of yore and the code of bushido have been turned on its head. Yet by the end of the movie, he has found his purpose, he is redeemed, his arc is complete.
How this is achieved in under two hours, and how Kurosawa vindicates the samurai blood in Mifune’s character by the end of the movie, is what makes this gem Kurosawa’s masterpiece.