Japanese film - Seibei Iguchi - Yamada
"The Twilight Samurai is a Japanese film released on November 2, 2002 where Yoji Yamada was the director. It was set during the middle of the nineteenth Century, some years before the event of the Meiji Restoration. The film explains the life that Seibei Iguchi, who was a low-class samurai working among the bureaucrat in the country. In as much as Iguchi was poor, he was not destitute. Such character traits assist Iguchi to manage and live a happy, as well as, content life alongside his loving senile mother and daughters. Unfortunately, an unfortunate incidence strikes Iguchi's life when his wife dies. The major theme in the film involves a major theme of missed opportunities and changing times.
Maintaining great patience and enthusiasm, Yamada portrays the story of Twilight Iguchi. The film production is beautiful, concise and deliberate in relation to the way Yoji executed it. In addition, the film takes the viewer back to what refers to Jidai-Geki, although the producer does so using a unique and different manner. Most of the Jidai-Geki or chanbara productions ignored the quality of violence, which the producer visualizes perfectly in all of his films. For instance, the ending of the film shows how Seibei steps over a slain body of an assassin, frozen in mortis, as well as, engulfed by numerous flies. The producer used the aspect of realism, which makes the film more authentic and anchored. By the moment the audience comes to the end of watching the film, there is clear view of the story of Seibei, his anachronistic behavior, how he could never function under the increasing modern world like the material goods, modernization and the West. These are some of the major themes in the film, which resonate in "The Twilight Samurai." Such themes are essential in the movie for elevating the film by Yamada from a "periodic picture" making it more philosophical.
[...] Other films focus on battles that are oriented in action, but this carries along two major fight scenes. Theme analysis The film is not the normal samurai swashbuckler, rather Yamada finds, in the ending times of the Tokugawa Shogunate era (1600-1867), the Japanese community uncannily similar to the modern one. In addition, the community is rich in recessionary lifestyles, men who are unable to express their feelings and office politics. Just like in other films by Yamada, he reveals the trademark of humanism in samurai films, alongside the tragic and darker aspect of individual nature in contrast with his usual film production. [...]
[...] A plot analysis The Twilight Samurai ranks as the seventy-seventh film by Yamada Yoji and the initial period drama. When the film starts, Iguchi Seibei, the major character, faces the death of his wife due to tuberculosis, which was a common disease during the era. Lower-ranking individuals in the community received unrecognized burials, but it was not the case for Iguchi's wife because she received a super funeral. Seibei worked in grain storage as an accounting officer for stock belonging to the clan of samurai. [...]
[...] The film is a clear indication of the real life people in the workplace face in the sense that they endure in the jobs they dislike and without advancement opportunities, yet have unknown fear to quit. People experience working under power structures while at the same time the powers demand loyalty from the same people it treats them as expendable. BIBLIOGRAPHY XSEED JKS Games (Firm). (2009). Samurai Shodown. Torrance, CA: XSEED JKS Games. Twilight samurai. (2004). S.l.: Empire Pictures. Clements, J. [...]
[...] His life is full of limited prospects in terms of increased salary or advancement simply because he does not love his position and lack of ambition. Missed opportunities and changing times is another theme in the film by Yamada. There are countless hints of such a theme in the film: the direct indication is when the clan soldiers' use firearms to practice instead of swords. More so, Iguchi is aware of the practice and adapts to a modern view of life in several dimensions. [...]
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