Yojimbo 1961

I generally like watching old movies. There's a natural selection at play in which anything that's survived long enough for me to hear about in the present day suggests that the film is good, or at least interesting. But there's always a certain amount of mental translation and adjustment at play. Some parts of filmmaking, and especially storytelling are timeless. The emotional conflict at the core of Casablanca, the impressive choreography of White Christmas, or the melancholy sweetness of Roman Holiday's ending resonate even in the modern day, but certain parts of these films, and any film that's outside of one's one time frame, is going to contain elements that feel of their time, or particular to something outside your experience, or even just flat out dated. That's always going to be something to get acclimated to, something that makes the film not quite as frictionless as it might otherwise be.

Those problems are magnified when a film is not only older, but the product of another culture and filmmaking tradition. Even apart from those dreaded subtitles that scare casual watchers from such films, there's the fact that different events and personas have different cultural connotations, that histories and norms and conventions that inform who a character is and how their journey is meant to be seen and understood can be wildly divergent. It becomes incumbent upon the viewer to try to bridge that gap, and even going in with an open mind can leave you feeling like you're missing big pieces of the puzzle.

Which is all to say that I liked Yojimbo, but at times I felt like I was connecting to a lot of it. The film's influence, extending to everything from The Man With No Name to Star Wars, made the stoic but impish badass at the center of the film feel warm and familiar, but to some extent, the film felt like an allegory for something I didn't have the mental reference point to appreciate. And certain characters felt like they were playing to a certain type, while certain events seemed to be aiming for a certain symbolic resonance that I had trouble parsing.

Some of the themes are clear regardless of the then-current events or cultural legacy the film seemed to be speaking to. Ideas like the futility of war, the pettiness and ineptitude of the "generals," the foolhardy impulses of the young to seek fame and fortune in the midst of battle. But in the same way these concepts are nigh-universal, they also felt particular to a time and a place that I simply wasn't privy to.

That doesn't mean I can't appreciate the film on a pure story level however. Sanjuro works as a sort of Samurai Bugs Bunny, slipping into town, making mischief on a pack of rubes who mostly seem to deserve it, and always staying one step ahead of them. The way he constantly tricks one side or the other into clashing, almost always leading to his benefit, working toward his larger goal of ridding the town of both warring gangs, has an entertaining quality. Again, in some ways it feels pure Looney Tunes, with a series of little vignettes each telling one little slice of the story as a separate adventure.

The film leans into that style visually. It's not hard to see how Yojimbo and its ilk were borrowed from heavily in the iconography and scène à faire in the classic American Western. It carries the same concept of a boomtown on the outskirts of the law's reach, fueled by a local conflict with the actual locals imperiled by the clash. It features the long stare-downs across a barren street in the middle of town while the rest of the city's residents look on from a safe distance.

Those showdowns are some of the most visually interesting elements of the film. One of the most striking images of the entire film is the initial clash between Ushitora and Seibei's men. It's impressive to see these two masses of humanity each charge and retreat, charge and retreat, so bold and full of bravado and puffed up intent to cause trouble, and yet diffident and yielding when push comes to shove. They come together and split back apart like a pair of waves magnetically repelled from one another. All the while, Sanjuro watches from above and chuckles, the knowing mischief-maker seeing what his handiwork has wrought.

And then the end of the film, where he stands alone against what's left of Ushitora's forces, has the ring of all those wild western showdowns. Again, it's not hard to understand why Sergio Leone would borrow the tension and framing and sensibility of this scene. The way the drum beats in the background, the tense, inherent atmosphere as the two sides size each other up, and building to the final cathartic release when they finally clash. There's a certain statement in the simplicity of a restaurateur's knife wielded by a shaggy Diogenes-like wandering warrior defeating the high-class modern revolver employed by Uno who's well-coifed and almost glamorous, another borrowed motif that seems to have had its influence on the idea of an elegant weapon for a more civilized age, the value of simplicity and directness over flash and beauty.

Interspersed in this wider, mischievously-engineered conflict, there are tons of smaller but distinct characters. Few of them are especially deep, many seeming more like walking ideas or concepts than lived-in human beings, but each has characteristics that make them more just another face in the crowd. The mercurial but ultimately noble old restaurateur who helps Sanjuro, the clown-like constable, the dumb lummox Ino, the pitiful but gracious farmer who Sanjuro aids, and even the hammer-wielding ox of an enforcer in Ushitora's employ give the film texture and character apart from its fairly simply, if still effective story.

It's hard to say how much translates when transposing a work across time and culture to even the most immersed and invested viewer. So much of how we understand the world around us is affected by the ideas and cultural norms we were socialized into, that we have little to no control over. How we make meaning in this world is a big question, and how we translate meaning, convey it to others, can be an even trickier one. But we can hope that the big ideas, the human drama, the laughs and poignant moments, come through and engage us, even when we're not sure if we're getting the whole story. Yojimbo is a film that I admittedly had some trouble connecting with at first, but the longer I watched, the more I became immersed in its world, and by the end I appreciated where it had taken me and its characters, even if I wasn't sure I entirely understood.

Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune collaborate again for the eighth chapter in a long and fruitful cinematic partnership. This act finds Mifune in a classic role: the cynical old samurai who rumbles into a small town, makes an impression and immediately lights the fuse to a long-simmering gang war. Casually manipulating both sides, if only to amuse himself and torment the unjust, he eventually presses his luck too far, gets in hot water and transforms the dalliance into an icy tale of violence and vengeance.

As usual, Mifune makes the part his own, stirring a delicious blend of bold irreverence and well-earned arrogance; always the coolest guy in the room, even when he's held captive and taking a beating. There's something about the way he carries himself - the nonchalance with which he strolls through a line of armed men, the raging tempest in his eyes - that tells us this guy is cut from a totally different cloth.

As with most lone samurai films, this one is both influenced by, and influential toward, the gun-slinging American western genre. In this case, Sergio Leone borrowed liberally from the plot for 1964's A Fistful of Dollars, sparking a legal struggle that delayed the spaghetti western's American release for years. Kurosawa often referenced the work of John Ford as a heavy personal influence, and the roots of this film are actually seeded in an American novel from the 1930s, so the lawsuit seems contradictory, but hey, that's how it went down. Either way, Yojimbo is a great one. Easy to watch, appreciate, and get wrapped up inside. I'd recommend it to anyone.