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The Last Samurai


Tonight, I decided to look back at my past as a movie enthusiast. Back in 2003, a movie came out that spoke directly to my young, naive mind. A movie about honor, bravery and sacrifice:





The plot of the movie follows the story of Nathan Algren, an American captain (loosly based on the French Cpt. Julies Brunet), woven into the period of the Meiji Restoration and Satsuma Rebellion in Japan, the events by which the movie was inspired. Because of his past experiences at war, Algren becomes a self-hating drunk. One night he accepts an offer to train Japanese soldiers for a substantial amount of money. A series of events leads to him being held captive by Katsumoto (based on Saigō Takamori). He then learns the ways of the samurai and eventually becomes one himself. From that point on, he will fight against the reformation and protect the traditional Japanese lifestyle, which he came to love.

The Last Samurai is filled with stunningly beautiful visuals, great special effects and great performances. The viewer is able to absorb some of the climate unique to the Japanese tradition. Many insights into a typical day of a warrior paired with a properly explained historical background paint a picture of Japan of those days.

As far as the acting goes, I think I should mention that there is an exception to the aforementioned great performances: Tom Cruise. I admit that I find that choice for the main character a perplexing one. His previous roles engraved a certain image in my mind: an action movie hotshot. Not exactly a perfect fit for a character with such depth and charisma as Nathan Algren, but perhaps that is only my opinion. Nonetheless: one can see that he did try to depict the captain best to his abilities. The problem is, he still came off slightly bland, in my opinion at least.

With that out of the way, I can now move on to one of the biggest virtues of the movie: the special effects in battles. They may not be the best I have ever seen, since there are some sharp edges one can easily spot: soldiers falling without getting hit, soldiers getting out of the way after being slain and soldiers getting hit and not reacting. Still though, they feel real. It is quite apparent that there was either no green screen or very little green screen use at the main battles. All felt realistic. It was like watching a proper, professional reenactment, only with movie editing and soundtrack. Not something one can experience with movies like 300 or even such masterpieces as The Lord of the Rings series.

Another thing worth mentioning as the movie's big virtue is the soundtrack. I have always found Hans Zimmer's work to be very good but with this movie, he really excelled. It was styled to sound a bit like Japanese traditional music in some parts, while being purely symphonic in others, which overlays perfectly onto the plot of the movie, which is ultimately about the mixing of the Japanese and western cultures.

As one could suspect, there is a "but" coming. And the "but" is, that The Last Samurai, while being very entertaining, is historically naive. That is a major disadvantage when taking under consideration that the movie was inspired by true events and thus history is very important in this picture. Why is it naive? Because the movie would have the viewer believe that the modernization of Japan was a bad thing. It wants to shove down the viewers throat, that because of the reforms, the spirit and traditions of Japan were killed by the oh so cruel and horrible western civilizations. As my history teacher pointed out to me, if it wasn't for Meiji's reforms, Japan would still be considerably behind compared to other countries in terms of technology and most likely it wouldn't have evolved into the high-tech capital of the world it is today. The samurai fought the reformation not just because it was transforming the culture but it also meant reduction of their social status and putting them in a considerably worse financial situation.

And as it turns out, the movie's depiction of the samurai is also inaccurate. The simple fact is, many of them were aggressive, pompous people who had the right to kill anyone without any consequences and they would sometimes use that right when they were even mildly offended. Actually, there was a scene depicting such an incident but it was left out of the final cut to show the warriors in a better light.

Well, of course, one could argue that since The Last Samurai is not based on true events, but simply inspired by them, it can get away with that. While that may be true, for me personally, that is still a major spoiler.

All things considered, The Last Samurai is a movie capable of squeezing tears out of one's eyes, filled with mesmerizing visuals, great battle scenes and well-developed characters. While the historical inaccuracies are like stains on a white shirt, with a proper attitude, the movie can still be a very enjoyable experience, and one to remember.