Last Samurai
Jan. 22nd, 2004 07:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerNot a review, but some thoughts inspired by it. I'm not planning on including any serious spoilers about the plot. Oh, and you should go and see it.
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green_amber went to see this when it came out, and I went to see it again with Ed again yesterday. I spent some time discussing it with Lilian, feeling that there was a theme, but not sure entirely what it was. It's very easy to see it as a luddite film - valuing an agrarian society over a technological one (or as Lilian put it "Killing people with swords is fine, killing them with guns is Evil.")
It's a bad idea to go around labelling every film as being 'about something'. Lots of films are just good, fun adventure stories. But this one felt like it had the kind of depth that comes with a particular theme or message. But it wasn't happy laying it out in the open so easily.
In the end I think that it was about globalisation. The Emperor's speech at the end highlights this - he effectively says that Japan must have modern knowledge and technology but that doesn't mean that it should forget what it is and where it comes from.
The film is, in fact, about a battle between people that believe in _something_ and people that believe in _nothing_. In between is the emperor (eventually), trying to find a way to combine the capitalism that will bring in vast improvements in living quality with caring for all of his people.
This suddenly makes it a very topical film, with a subject very close to my heart. I firmly believe that it takes a capitalist system to reward people enough to cause general increases in prosperity. But on the other hand I also firml believe that capitalism badly fails a chunk of the population who need to be looked after.
Similarly, while I'm in favour of trade between poor and rich countries, as this causes increases in education levels, standards of living, etc. I also think that it needs to be monitored to prevent richer countries forcing inequitable situations on the poorer ones. Finding a medium point between the two sides of things is a horribly difficult thing to do and whatever you do, a proportion of people will be unhappy with you.
Myself and
green_amber went to see this when it came out, and I went to see it again with Ed again yesterday. I spent some time discussing it with Lilian, feeling that there was a theme, but not sure entirely what it was. It's very easy to see it as a luddite film - valuing an agrarian society over a technological one (or as Lilian put it "Killing people with swords is fine, killing them with guns is Evil.")It's a bad idea to go around labelling every film as being 'about something'. Lots of films are just good, fun adventure stories. But this one felt like it had the kind of depth that comes with a particular theme or message. But it wasn't happy laying it out in the open so easily.
In the end I think that it was about globalisation. The Emperor's speech at the end highlights this - he effectively says that Japan must have modern knowledge and technology but that doesn't mean that it should forget what it is and where it comes from.
The film is, in fact, about a battle between people that believe in _something_ and people that believe in _nothing_. In between is the emperor (eventually), trying to find a way to combine the capitalism that will bring in vast improvements in living quality with caring for all of his people.
This suddenly makes it a very topical film, with a subject very close to my heart. I firmly believe that it takes a capitalist system to reward people enough to cause general increases in prosperity. But on the other hand I also firml believe that capitalism badly fails a chunk of the population who need to be looked after.
Similarly, while I'm in favour of trade between poor and rich countries, as this causes increases in education levels, standards of living, etc. I also think that it needs to be monitored to prevent richer countries forcing inequitable situations on the poorer ones. Finding a medium point between the two sides of things is a horribly difficult thing to do and whatever you do, a proportion of people will be unhappy with you.
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no subject
Date: 2004-01-22 11:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-22 11:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-24 03:30 pm (UTC)Define improvement.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-25 01:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-26 02:55 pm (UTC)I knew you'd say technology.
Technology doesn't always = improvement. Depends what you want. The entire point of the film was that to the samurai, it didn't. Guns = technology. But they held no appeal.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-26 02:58 pm (UTC)But then the Samurai were the feudal overclass. Of course they didn't like anything which was going to radically change the structure of that society.