Dir. Edward Zwick
The Last Samurai is a funny-old-film. It weaves a tale of America, or rather, an American, and Japan co-operating in the art of warfare. If I stay on the films' level here, it's a film about a disillusioned war-veteran of the American Indian and Civil Wars, Cpt. Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise), who acts as an adviser to the modernizing Japanese empire, crushing a rebellion of the old regime. He's a fish-out-water, adapting, reacting, and learning from the noble samurai, and Japanese culture as whole, where respect and honour are valued above all. In sum, a crock of bullshit. Romanticized it may be, but it's so inaccurate to the history of the land and the samurai that it borders on insult, possibly even racism.
Now I don't think it's racist, but others could very easily. It's a naive view of samurai culture, as it portrays them as honourable warriors, performing seppuku, and waging war with their iconic swords rather than guns. These things happened to a degree, but just that, a degree, nowhere near how it;s portrayed here. Algren, who it's impossible not to see as the most apple-pie American due to the casting of Tom Cruise, is not-so-subtly portrayed as some sort of saviour, with his knowledge of firearm warfare, educating an empire that only now catches up to the American wars waged with guns. Wrong, utterly wrong. The Japanese had been accustomed to the use of firearms for nearly 250 years. The enemy samurai, portrayed as a group of veterans at-war, didn't exist like this at the time, as they would have been out of hard-war for many years, becoming landlords, tax collectors, and farmers. Neither would the Americans forge weapon trade-relations, that had been covered by the British and Germans far earlier. It stands to reason then that Algren would never have been an adviser to teach the young soldiers how to shoot.
I mean the film has ninjas for god-sake! Ninjas! In the late 18th century! They were forgotten memories come the 17th. Do you see what I mean? It comes across as the American white-man's view of Japanese history, with accuracy be damned. Samurai fight using swords, therefore America must bring guns. There are cherry-blossoms, talk of bushido, sepukku, and ninjas. It feels like Japanese culture constructed out of stereotype, and based on past American films' portrayal of Japan. Lest we forget that John Wayne played Genghis Khan (yes I know Khan was a Mongol, but you get my point).
But on the other hand, it isn't racist as it clearly has Algren (I find it so hard not so type Cruise) learn from the culture. Over the course of the film he learns that the Japanese are not savage as he was told, in fact they're better than Americans in many respects. But again, I'm sorry, this just reeks of cultural tourism and the superiority of the Americans. I can't pinpoint why exactly. The time-frame makes sense to have the Americans believe themselves superior, but Cruise learns they aren't in truth. But just by having Cruise it has this aura of the Hollywoodisation of Japanese culture and history. And it cannot avoid feeling superior as Hollywood cinema has its own rules and viewpoints. Cough, Independence Day, cough.
Let's talk about the firearms directly instead of skirting the issue. The films opens with Algren, drunk, presenting a show to popularize the sales of an American rifle. We know that weaponry is important from the offset. He brings this knowledge and the guns themselves to the Japanese, as we know. Now the film is inaccurate in suggesting that the Japanese didn't have guns already. What is isn't inaccurate about is that Japan is in a processes of change. The Meiji restoration was the forging of the Japanese empire, rather than the feudalism that ran the country before. Modernization came with government, industrialization, and yes, firearms. It's a theme I touched on in my discussion of Lady Snowblood, and I've discussed the oncoming passing of the samurai before in my discussion of Seven Samurai. This post then acts as a sort of logical endpoint to this 'trilogy' of themes, despite the inaccuracy of this film.
What the firearms symbolise in The Last Samurai is the future, and the modernization of Japan. It is counterpointed however by the discoveries of Algen, who finds that the samurai sword, and the ways of the samurai are not antiquated. Some of these ideals should survive the modernization. Guns have no honour in mass warfare, death is impersonal, distant, and fast. There's a scene where a bow is fired against many gun-wielders, and Zwick shows it dispatching many of them. It's a last hoorah for the old, and the antiquated. War has changed, and yet it hasn't. Principles remain the same despite the proficiency of the tools. Yet principles change due to the tools. What we must ask is whether modernization occurs due to the gun, or whether it occurs due to the change in culture, that just so happens to be symbolised in the use of guns?
My discussion of this film has been almost schizophrenic, as I just can't decide whether I enjoy it for what it is, hate it for it's pure Hollywood heart, or simply enjoy the beautiful cinematography, the battle scenes, and it's discussion of the old ways versus the new. I don't love this film, that much is clear. It's too American a viewpoint, one that's ignorant over-all. It just so happens that this is a central theme of the film, as the ignorant American is enlightened by the different culture. The thing is, I feel that this is a film that I would have enjoyed in my childhood, as it encapsulates everything I would have thought of Japanese culture back then. But there comes a point where naivety becomes ignorance. In films such as Seven Samurai we get the viewpoint of the Japanese film-maker. I can be damned sure that they know more about their own culture than any American, or myself, does. It's for this reason that by going to the source, and watching original Japanese films, you get the true viewpoints of the culture. The Last Samurai isn't a bad film, it simply doesn't have a true viewpoint of the culture it portrays, it's ignorant, and misguided.
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