302 - Harakiri

[captainofbeef]

- New, restored high-definition digital transfer
- New video interviews with legendary star Tatsuya Nakadai and acclaimed screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto
- Exclusive video introduction by Japanese-film historian Donald Richie
- A new essay by celebrated film scholar John Mellen and a reprint of her 1972 interview with Kobayashi
- Original theatrical trailer
- Poster gallery
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- More!

[criterionmaster]

A great samurai film that is different from most. It has almost no action the whole film until the end. The lead performance is great and the story is a very interesting one. Go check this bad boy out if you love samurai films.

[criterionmaster]

Tetsuo Tamba, 1922-2006
Actor Tetsuo Tamba, a veteran of more than two hundred films most recently Yoji Yamada's The Twilight Samurai and Takashi Miike's Gozuâ died this week in Tokyo of complications from pneumonia. In addition to his most well known role in You Only Live Twice, Tamba also appeared memorably in Masahiro Shinoda's Samurai Spy and Masaki Kobayaski's Kwaidan and Harakiri. Tamba was 84 years old.

SOURCE: criterionco.com/asp/index.asp

[ie]

I find it funny that a lot of people call this movie Seppuku.

Seppuku and Harakiri are Apples and Oranges. Apples and Oranges are both fruits, but if you look at an Apple and say "hey, that looks like a tasty Orange!" you're obviously not doing it right. If you want a quick reference: Seppuku is a more honorable form of suicide, as in suicide to save your family name, as part of Japanese culture, whereas Harakiri would be something along the lines of suicide for the fun of it. You know, something like that.


So, the moral of this morbid story is: this movie should not be called Seppuku.

edit: Hara, not hari. Didn't notice that before.

And actually, this movie should be named after the proper term that they use in the movie, which I'm 90% sure isn't seppuku. Ah well, Harakiri works just as well as Seppuku as well as the proper term anyways.

[ie]

It's funny how no one says "hara kiri" throughout the whole movie. Listen for yourself. I don't know the exact term, but as I was trying to say before, there are various names for the various types of seppuku, and the term that they were using throughout the movie was none of the above.


As for the movie itself?

SPOILER: Click to show

The sequence that starts in the graveyard and ends in the field is perfect. I have not seen every samurai movie ever released, but I'm sure even if I had, I would be hard pressed to find a sequence that had better cinematography and just how the fight went. How they changed stances. Masterful.

Also, if you ever wanted a crash course in historical Japan, this might be more entertaining than a history book.


10/10

[criterionmaster]

I am very glad you liked it, if you have the Criterion release I believe there is a film historian interview on there that explains why it is titled what it is and explains it very well. It is definitely worth a look, although I can't quite remember what he said.

How about how little action was in the film, especially for being a samurai film? Then the ending can out of no where and was just amazing.

[lordofdance]

The ending of this movie, though depressing, still delivers a somewhat inspiring message: "You can't beat the system, but you can still hack up some of its employess."

[ie]

Oh hey, two things:

1) I like this movie even more after seeing Samurai Rebellion. Not that it was a bad movie, but in terms of the "field battles," there was just no contest as to which one looked, felt and was better. It just made me appreciate how, in Harakiri, the two samurai changed poses. You do not see that in most samurai movies.

Additionally, if we exclude the Seven Samurai, this is my favorite samurai movie. I would show it to anyone interested in seeing what makes these old samurai movies worthwhile.


2) Criterionmaster! You own the DVD. Try to find that bit about why Harakiri is named incorrectly, and post it here. Could you? Pleeeease? ;D ;D ;D

[criterionmaster]

I will, sometime tomorrow probably. (I am in the middle of a Simpsons marathon.) Although I do want to say that this film isn't like most samurai films so watching this won't give you an entire opinion on the genre. There are many elements of samurai films found throughout, but it is also much slower than most. So, while I agree with ie that this is a fantastic film, I wouldn’t recommend starting with this if you are just starting with samurai films.

[ie]

I just can't think of any better samurai movies that aren't named the Seven Samurai, but you can list some good samurai movies in the Battle of the Samurai Movies thread.

As for the slow pace, I don't think it's that as much as a build-up. This movie builds up to ending, so in exchange for watching a samurai movie with about one hour of no samurai battles, you get a couple of fucking amazing samurai battles, each better than the last. I like the "field" battle the best, myself.

But I do feel that Harakiri is one of the strongest entries into the samurai genre, so if you're unfamiliar, it's better than trying out a random Zatoichi movie, even if it doesn't have all of the action and excitement. It's more of a samurai study than a samurai fight movie.

[ie]

Reminder.

[criterionmaster]

(Minor spoilers)

Okay Donald Ritchie says this (in my words) Seppuku = committing suicide with honor, Harakiri = committing it without honor

He then says that the guy who bit his tongue is committing harakiri because he is trying to kill himself by bleeding to death instead of slicing his gut open, which would be the honorable way to die, or seppuku. So either way, he is suppose to commit seppuku, but he commits harakiri instead. They never mention harakiri because he was actually supposed to be committing seppuku. And even if they don't mention seppuku, it doesn't need to be mentioned because it was already known that that was what he was suppose to be doing.

[ie]

Well the thing is, the Japanese have this weird obsession with suicide, thus why all this discussion.

You're right that "Seppuku = committing suicide with honor, Harakiri = committing it without honor," and, to imagine that Wikipedia has such a big list on the subject, even though its accuracy is questionable, really says a lot.

I also found a non-Wikipedia article when trying to determine whether Jumonji Giri would be a more accurate title, but nope. And also, the original title of Suicide Club was, according to foreign language lovers IMDB, was jisatsu.


The reason for all of this morbid talk is because I when I saw Harakiri, I did not hear the term harakiri nor seppuku once. I can understand some Japanese, but not enough to be able to tell you what they said or be able to accurately tell what they were really saying without some sort of guide. So, even though I doubt there could be chance for this movie to be renamed or anything like that, it's still a relevant, and dare I say interesting, topic to talk about for this movie.

I just can't understand why they didn't go with what was actually said in the movie, in the original Japanese script, the original term, instead of going with a more generic term, and one of the more offensive terms at that.


I would have more thoughts, but I'm tired.

edit: Rather than bump this thread, I'd just say that while watching the Twilight Samurai, when there was talk of this sort of nature, the subtitles said hara-kiri but the guy said Sehhhh-puku, so I was a little thrown off by that.

[ie]

Rewatched this on Criterion DVD and watched all the extras. Fucking awesome movie. No way in hell I'll buy it for $36, though.