Yoji Yamada Samurai Trilogy Twilight Samurai, The Hidden Blade, Love and Honor FOR IPAD, HANDHELD OR SMALLER PC VIEWING

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0351817/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0442286/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0483578/
“Twilight Samurai” (2002),“The Hidden Blade,” (2004) and “Love and Honor,” offer very different visions of traditional samurai films. Yamada makes his characters from long ago accessible, real people, not heroes, not fighters, but people who, like us, struggle to raise their families or to maintain their marriages and integrity in the midst of great social change. None of the wealthy polished floor Shogun lifestyle for any of these people; they are at the lower echelons of their social class and are often not sure they even want to be a part of it anymore

I am not sure of Yoji Yamada’s political associations today but the N.Y. Times reported in 1982 that he was “a member in good standing of Japan’s Communist Party” and usually tried to make “some reference in his films to man’s disaffection with society.”

For those of you who think of Kurosawa’s samurai movies as genre-defining, you are likely to be surprised by Yamada’s approach (even though both directors were men of the left) for Yamada sees the men not primarily as warriors but as court functionaries in a feudal system that was about to be replaced by the capitalism of the Meiji restoration. They are always pathetic in one fashion or another, but find a way in the climax of each of his great movies to redeem their honor in a display of swordsmanship against the feudal forces of oppression. These are very class conscious films, even if the alignment of class forces bears little resemblance to modern-day bourgeois society. (h.a)