Toshiro Mifune and A Cock and Bull Story
Toshiro Mifune is one sexy beast. A 1984 Japanese magazine poll proclaimed him “the most Japanese man among men. The one whose face expressed the best of Japanese pride, power and virility.” His imposing eyebrows and elastic but grizzly physiognomy define the samurai genre. Not only did Mifune work with all the masters (he has appeared in 16 Akira Kurosawa films), but his work spans the spectrum of the samurai movie paradigm. This week, Cinematheque Ontario provides the opportunity to see just how varied this work is. If you missed Kurosawa’s Sanjura and Seven Samurai or Inagaki’s Samurai Saga (a hilarious take on the Cyrano story), make sure you catch the next two offerings.
Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, the basis for Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars, chronicles the travails of a down-and-out samurai who enters a seemingly deserted town only to find that it’s actually cowering in fear due to protracted gang warfare. Mifune’s character hires himself out to both sides and then systematically destroys the lot. The scornful strut and mercenary callousness Mifune displays here set the stage for the iconic hardass personas adopted by Clint Eastwood et al.
In Masaki Koboyashi’s Samurai Rebellion, Mifune is cast as the faithful, aging retainer who one day goes postal on his overseer. The tension in the film steadily and delicately builds as Bossman (played by Tatsuya Nakadai, who was also Mifune’s adversary in Samurai Saga) heaps abuse on his inferior. Bang-o! Mifune’s character transforms into a ballet of steel and blood. Of all the films to see this week at Summer Samurai, this is the one.
When the series ends, try and find a copy of 1971’s Red Sun, Mifune’s lone appearance in an American western (alongside Charles Bronson). It’s not that good. but when juxtaposed against Mifune’s best samurai films, Red Sun makes for interesting (and often hilarious) watching.
Samurai Rebellion screens at Cinematheque Ontario, Friday, July 14, 8:45 p.m. at Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas St. W., 416-968-3456, www.bell.ca/cinematheque.Yojimbo screens at Cinematheque Ontario Saturday, July 15, 2006, at 8:45 p.m.
If you’re staying in, pick up the recently released DVD of Michael Winterbottom’s Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. I’ve drooled over Winterbottom more than enough in this space already (see my review of his explosive docudrama, Road to Guantanamo), so I’ll spare the plaudits for the moment. Tristram Shandyis in the same vein as 24 Hour Party People, Winterbottom’s last foray with British comic Steve Coogan. Last time, Coogan was playing Factory Records owner Tony Parsons in an anarchic, postmodern ode to the Manchester dance-rock scene of the 1980s. This time, the two have taken on Laurence Sterne’s most unfilmable (and unreadable) novel. The novel is unfilmable predominantly because it starts out like a standard autobiography and then is overrun by so much digression and backtracking that, by the midway point of its 500 pages, the main character, the the titular Tristram, still hasn’t been born. Sterne’s book spoofs and deconstructs its own form: that of the early novel.
What does Winterbottom do? Why, he spoofs and deconstructs the medium of film in equal turn. Coogan and Welsh comedian Rob Brydon play Tristram and Uncle Toby in an adaptation of the book. They’re both hilariously egomaniacal actors, lusty for fame and tail. The film alternates between what’s meant to be actual footage and snippets of behind-the-scenes anarchy.
The recently release DVD features a slew of special features, the best of which is the behind-the-scenes section (yes, I know, a behind-the-scenes section for a film about making a film is just too postmodern, isn‚t it?) Here we take a tour around Laurence Sterne’s house with comedian Stephen Fry and sit in on more hilarious backstage bitching and tomfoolery. For those who loved the film in theatre, the DVD is a must. For those who passed it over, here’s a chance to right the wrong.
