beat takeshi's tribute to shintaro katsu has been a little controversial as one could have predicted. The final entry of the series, directed by shintaro katsu himself, was also controversial, since it is the bloodiest, most uncompromising, and most swiftly paced of that series, presenting us with pretty raw film with some unsettling themes. - ultimately, zatoichi leaves the world pretty much as corrupted by yakusa as he first finds it.
takeshi's zatoichi comes to us very stylized - blond, with clean clothes, a very neatly crafted sword cane. The violence is augmented by CGI blood spurting (in the documentary accompanying the film on DVD, takeshi is frank that he wanted the blood to look a little phony). And then there is the dance segment at the end, foreshadowed throughout the film by rhythmic natural sounds of men and women at work.
After trying to get a hold on this film and its clearly complex relationship to the original series, through multiple viewings of the film, I think I've finally grasped that the dance sequence is really the heart of the whole film. no matter what you think of it in relationship to the rest of the film, it's extremely entertaining ; so, perhaps that's all we need to know about this film - perhaps it's all we need to know about the original zatoichi series as well.
There is a strange question that recurs again and again in Takeshi's films - what do we do to entertain ourselves when death is near, and there's neither need nor possibility of accomplishing anything with a purpose? In most of Takeshi's films, the proper response to that question is to live life like a circus. Here, obviously, salvation is to be found in dance. I'm not sure that these answers are satisfactory; but the question is too disturbing to ignore.
takeshi's zatoichi comes to us very stylized - blond, with clean clothes, a very neatly crafted sword cane. The violence is augmented by CGI blood spurting (in the documentary accompanying the film on DVD, takeshi is frank that he wanted the blood to look a little phony). And then there is the dance segment at the end, foreshadowed throughout the film by rhythmic natural sounds of men and women at work.
After trying to get a hold on this film and its clearly complex relationship to the original series, through multiple viewings of the film, I think I've finally grasped that the dance sequence is really the heart of the whole film. no matter what you think of it in relationship to the rest of the film, it's extremely entertaining ; so, perhaps that's all we need to know about this film - perhaps it's all we need to know about the original zatoichi series as well.
There is a strange question that recurs again and again in Takeshi's films - what do we do to entertain ourselves when death is near, and there's neither need nor possibility of accomplishing anything with a purpose? In most of Takeshi's films, the proper response to that question is to live life like a circus. Here, obviously, salvation is to be found in dance. I'm not sure that these answers are satisfactory; but the question is too disturbing to ignore.