Kagemusha
August 2005 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Is appearance everything? The late Japanese director Akira Kurosawa seems to be saying just that in his epic samurai movie, Kagemusha. In it, the Shingen, a powerful warlord, makes his followers promise that no one will announce his death for three years after its occurrence. They are charged to produce a double and go on with business as if nothing has happened. This ruse, he feels, will keep the country from falling apart under the fitful rule of his rivals. Lord Shingen, therefore, spares a thief whose resemblance to himself is striking. The thief is a kagemusha, Lord Shingen’s shadow warrior.

A sniper kills Shingen, and the hapless criminal is put in his place. He fools everyone from the concubines to the loving grandson, and the country thrives under his surrogate rule. At the end of three years he is driven out, one of the rivals takes over, and all of his men are killed in a battle in which guns prove their superiority over swords and lances.

Kurosawa takes three hours to tell this simple story, letting it spin out in a series of radiantly beautiful but slow-moving tableaux. Surely there has been no better director at setting up a memorable shot. Consider the shot when the thief is presented to the nobility as the Shingen. It ends with him playing with his moustache, seated in front of a flag that is rippling in a heavy wind. Wind plays a big part throughout the movie. Many of its most memorable scenes involve the wind whipping costumes about or rustling the flags during battle. Though it does not involve even a breeze, the scene near the end of the film that depicts horses dying on the battlefield is a thing of macabre beauty that will stick with you forever.

Though it exhibits grain occasionally, Criterion’s video transfer is very smooth and movie-like. There’s a huge color palette in this film, ranging from pastels to vibrant colors. All of them have incredible presence here. The picture is also highly detailed so that one feels he can touch every strand of hair, every drop of water as horses thunder down the beach to the surf. The sound is exceptionally clean. It makes up in clarity what it lacks in quantity. Frequency range is excellent, with solid bass and a transparent upper range.

As usual with Criterion, there are copious extras. The movie itself has an astute commentary by Kurosawa biographer Stephen Prince. The first disc also contains Japanese and American trailers. The second disc has a 19-minute documentary that shows how Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas labored to get Kagemusha released in the US and how it influenced their own work. Two additional documentaries deal with the making of the movie and with a series of Suntory Whiskey commercials made on the set. In addition there’s a beautiful 48-page booklet with an essay by Peter Grilli, a 1981 interview with Kurosawa, and a biographical sketch by Donald Richie, lavishly illustrated with Kurosawa’s color storyboard paintings of scenes from the movie.

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