Sanjuro

Sanjuro (椿三十郎, or Tsubaki Sanjuro) is a black-and-white film directed by Akira Kurosawa, released in 1962 and starring the charismatic Toshiro Mifune. Once again I got ahead of myself by watching the sequel before the prequel, in this case Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961).

After recently rewatching some of Kurosawa’s larger works, such as Rashomon (1950), Seven Samurai (1954), and Ran (1985), Sanjuro felt like a smaller-scale film, though still unmistakably Kurosawa in its style, pacing, humor and cinematography. Of the three, I found it most similar to Ran in its scheming characters and struggles for power, though visually they’re almost opposites. Ran is full of wide shots and expansive landscapes, while Sanjuro feels comparatively claustrophobic, creating the sense that “the enemy,” or his spies, could be just outside the door. This enclosure also reduces any feeling of distance between the competing factions, which adds to the tension and uncertainty.

All in all I enjoyed Sanjuro, especially for its comic elements. The heated exchanges between the band of nine young samurai, repeatedly referred to as baka (idiots), and the ronin Sanjuro (Mifune) are consistently entertaining, as are the many well-choreographed sword fights.