Word: saigo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Perhaps the most poignant performance, however, comes from Kazunari Ninomiya as common soldier Saigo. Hoping to return home to his pregnant wife, Saigo breaks from the traditional Japanese codes of honor, struggling to persevere even with no hope of Japanese victory rather than honorably committing suicide for the country. Through the journey, Eastwood reveals the stark contrast between Japanese and American mentalities of honor...
Yamashita's script is much more relentlessly cruel. In essence, the Japanese officers compelled the bravery (and suicide) of their troops at gunpoint. Only the Japanese commander, Lieut. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (a mysterious historical figure who fascinates Eastwood), and a fictional conscript, Saigo, whose fate Yamashita intertwines with his commanding officer's, demonstrate anything like humanity as a Westerner might understand it. The lieutenant general, educated in part in the U.S., is respectful of its national spirit (and industrial might) and believes that a live soldier, capable of carrying on the fight, is infinitely more valuable than a dead...
Faithfully portraying the lives and events that inspire his historical epics is crucial to Zwick, who framed Samurai around the life of the legendary warrior Saigo Takamori. His reverence for historical fiction stems from his attempt to recover the wonder of past events...