Also nominated for a Best Foreign
Language picture in this year's Oscar was a film by
Yoji Yamada.
Twilight Samurai
(Tasogare Seibei) is an affecting drama about
a petty samurai, Iguichi Seibei, who toils in a somewhat
grubby life as the single father of two young daughters
and a minor clerk in the stores department of his
clan's castle.
A depth of feelingHe is a widower - his higher class wife dying from
consumption - and must recover the debts created
by her lavish funeral by working his own small patch
of farm and making small insect cages at night.
His coworkers in the stores department have given
up inviting him for their late night carousing sessions
and call him "Twilight Sebei" because
he always hurries home instead of hanging out. Worse,
Iguichi's own hygiene and appearance are suffering
for lack of a wife, for which he is shamed when
the head of the clan arrives for a surprise inspection.
Despite this, he has a genuinely happy life with
his young children and senile mother. When his uncle
approaches him with the offer of another wife who
could help him with his work, he refuses, not wanting
to interrupt his existence and still stung from
the death of his first.
His life makes a turn, however, when his best friend's
sister returns to the community after having her
own marriage (to a mean drunk) annulled. When the
ex-husband returns and makes trouble, Seibei has
to step in to save his friend from accepting a duel
with the noted swordsman. It is then that we discover
that Seibei himself has been hiding that he is an
accomplished student of the short-sword school.
His character is really a nice construction. Humble
and sensitive, wanting to get out of the samurai
life but held back and tripped up by his past obligations
and his status.
An interesting aside is that Seibei's clan, in
the epilogue, are revealed to be one of samurai
clans who defied the Meiji Emperor's demand to disarm.
That's right, one of the 'last samurai' so crudely
portrayed in the Tom Cruise film. Twilight
Samurai probably has one sixteenth of the
budget of The Last Samurai
but contains an attitude that is the polar opposite
of the Cruise vehicle and depth of feeling found
nowhere in that film.
While the filmmakers of western film feel the need
to embrace the surface impression of the samurai,
a people who are too proud to change with the times
and think nothing of throwing their lives (and those
of their families) away for a message, Iguichi Seibei
wants only to live with his family, to see that
they are cared for, to be with a woman he loves.
For Seibei, these are real feelings that have real
value. When Seibei is tasked to use his newly revealed
skills in a final duel with another samurai who
seeks to leave the service, we can see the mirror
opposite to the paper thin sentiment of the big
budget movie. Tom Cruise, the outsider, girds on
his armour with relish. Seibei, the real samurai,
doesn't even want to kill the other man.
the
Canucks do something in the playoffs, this will likely
be the only note this year I will write on them and
it comes the day after a disgusting incident that makes
me question following the sport at all. Last night during
the last meeting between the Colorado Avalanche and
the Canucks, Todd Bertuzzi sucker punched Steve Moore
and then appeared to ride the unconcious forward down
to the ice - payback for the Moore hit on Naslund three
weeks earlier. 
