Word: shingen
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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KAGEMUSHA begins with a simple tableau: a Japanese feudal lord, Shingen (Tatsya Nakada), sits in the center of the screen: on the left is his brother (Tsutomu Yamakazi); in the lower right corner is a thief (Tatsuya Nakada), whom the brother has plucked from a crucifix because he bears a strong resemblance to Shingen. An austere composition, the lord virtually immobile, the camera immobile, the long scene played out in one shot. Later, after the lord. Shingen, has been assassinated, we learn that he was called the Moutain, that the Moutain did not move, and therein was his strength...
Chaos lurks in shots of Shingen's army. The soldiers on horseback carry lofty banners and spears and rifles and everyting's always criss-crossed. Blood-splotched bodies lie tangled in other bodies with banners still aloft. Spears sticking into...
Kurosawa undercuts the very idea of meaningful action by consistently cutting away from it. His camera looks over the sleeping army when Shingen is mortally wounded (shot, we later discover, by a tubby little sniper who simply into the dark). Before Ieyasu, Singen's snarling enemy, leaps onto a horse, Kurosawa cuts to the smirking face of his servant, and we only hear the man mount and gallop off. The vigorous sound-track, in fact, gives us amplified, overly heroic sounds--thundering hoofbeats, ringing shots, and a lush score by Shinichiro Ikebe that frequently reminds one of Star Wars...
Kagemusha is magnificently served by Tatsuya Nakada as Shingen and his double, the thief. Nakada has white, puffed-out sideburns, and capacious sacks beneath his beautiful liquid eyes. As Shingen they convey warehouses of wisdom; as the thief they are the befuddled eyes of a clown. Eventually the two personas merge; so powerful is Shingen's spirit that merely by acting naturally the thief begins to duplicate his actions, almost to think his thoughts. When Shingen's son, Katsuyori, eager to assume his dead father's power by exposing the double, challenges the compulsorily silent double at a large meeting...
...double views the battle, in effect, from a position of crucifixion: he is powerless to act, he knows he musn't move, but he also suffers for these soldiers, perhaps glimpsing the inevitable moment when Shingen's death would be known and all hell would break loose...