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Project Ludovico

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Sufficient Juice said:
I'm not sure I trust anything he made after Eastern Promises, though.

You'd need a director who is a visual guy, works with little dialogue, and understands the movie's political content. I'm not sure who satisfyingly fulfills all three.
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Probably it would turn out like the remake of Straw Dogs.
 
Omicron said:
Probably it would turn out like the remake of Straw Dogs.
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Yeah, that's exactly what I'm afraid of.

When I say "understands the movie is political", I mean the precise opposite of a guy like Rod Lurie. Someone who makes loud, obvious, capital-P Political movies would fuck it up majorly. You need political allegory, not political "look at my Serious Film (TM)". These things are almost always bad.
 
Guess who got their names and genders changed legally?

These Women

(I spent a lot of time working on that sorry guys)
 
HUZZA!!! (We need a 'party time!' emote. :p )
 
A Samurai, Hanshirō Tsugumo, approaches the gate of the Ii Clan, asking for an audience. He is a Ronin who thanks to the peace, cannot find work and has become destitute, and asks for permission to commit Harakiri in their courtyard. They ask if he has heard of Chijiiwa Motome, a samurai who used to serve the same master as Hanshirō.

Motome came to them months ago, asking for their permission to commit Harakiri. They confer with the son of the Lord, and they agree that he is probably looking for alms like all the other Samurai have been doing ever since another Lord took pity on one, who made the request in all sincerity, and made him a retainer. Since then, many samurai have shown up at the gates of various clans, requesting permission to kill themselves in order to receive some money instead. They suggest giving him a paltry sum and sending him on his way but the son of the local lord refuses, saying that if they do that they will never see the end of penniless Ronin in this age of peace. Instead, they will force him to commit the act.

Preying upon his desperation, they twist the knife, making it seem like he's going to be made a retainer but then bluntly informing him that he will be committing Harakiri today and if not, he will be killed in dishonor. They express glee when they find out he's been reduced to selling his swords and has only his bamboo blades left. He begs them for a brief respite, probably with which to flee his fate, but they mockingly ask if he's one of those Ronin running a scam, when they thought he was a man of honor. The assembled samurai are sneering at this penniless fool, and putting his honor on the line because there is no making it out of this alive. Reluctantly, he is forced to crosswise disembowel himself using his bamboo short blade, having to repeatedly stab himself to even get the blade in, while they mockingly salute his honor as he dies one of the most awful deaths you will see in a movie, biting off his own tongue in the process.

Having been told this, Hanshirō is asked if he still wants to go through with it, the threat implicit, and he says that yes, he absolutely will. He just needs one of three men to be his second, to cleanly cut off his head. These men have been mysteriously and simultaneously sick and they send a messenger to check on them. While they wait, he asks if he can tell a story to past the time. You see, he does in fact know Chijiiwa Motome...

Harakiri is a deeply cynical but powerful work aimed at the honor culture. The central conflict of the movie is those who claim to value honor and those who actually possess it, and its themes of honor, unemployment and desperation give it a lasting quality that makes it universally relevant for a movie that was pure bomb throwing metaphor in the decades after the end of WW2. Yeah, Chijiiwa Motome dishonored himself with his plan to fake intent to kill himself in order to get money, but he was desperate. He was surrounded by men who found cruel delight in his death, despite the fact that they could have easily found themselves in the same fate if they had been made redundant by their lords passing. Where is the honor in that?

Harakiri if anything, asks a simple yet complex question: What is honor? What does it entail, what does it mean, how important is it, what's important about it and how can it be used against you by people who don't share it but see it as a means of leverage over you and status for themselves? The man who married his daughter and who he raised as if he were a son embarked on a scheme to get money to save the life of his family. Nobody even thought to ask his situation and Hanshirō comments that he never thought of selling his sword as his son in law had, and curses himself for it, because his petty honor cost him the lives of the three people closest to him. He has honor still though, and his revenge will be a moral and philosophical one.

Harakiri is one of the greats for a reason. It is wonderfully written, deftly handling political and philosophical questions and making use of in media res that isn't "Three Weeks Earlier" because you don't know how to start your story and decided to put an exciting part from later first. The fact that whatever Hanshirō has done is done, as he slowly tells this story adds tension and suspense. The past and present are expertly combined in this way. We don't know why he's here, we don't know what he has planned, we don't know what he has already done and we don't know what the Clan will do in response. They think he's full of shit and a swindler but by the end there will be no doubt as to his sincerity.

At the same time the cinematography and direction are perfect. The film is beautiful to look at even in its simplicity, and the direction is the kind that gave young New Hollywood types Film Boners at UCLA or NYU. We see what we need to in the way the makes the most impact, the studied and simple perfection of a master of his trade. When there is action, its brutal and unflinching, never sanitizing the violence. The movie is mostly unscored, using only a simple track sparingly to underline the significance of what is going on. When that sole instrument starts playing, you know shit just got real. The movie is classic cinema, emphasis on classic. A lot of these works are relevant and beautiful even to this day, and I should really highlight more going forward as I think that people overlook movies this old except for the handful that enter modern culture.

As a sidenote, I can assure you that me doing a review of a movie about someone that talks up the valor, honor and success of their clan and tries to cover up anything that rather pointedly proves that these claims are hollow lies, has no bearing to anything that may or may not be happening right now, I assure you. Especially since it involves trusted enforcers and defenders of their lord being forced to fall upon their own swords, which has nothing to do with anything right now.

I assure you.
 
Athene said:
A Samurai, Hanshirō Tsugumo, approaches the gate of the Ii Clan, asking for an audience. He is a Ronin who thanks to the peace, cannot find work and has become destitute, and asks for permission to commit Harakiri in their courtyard. They ask if he has heard of Chijiiwa Motome, a samurai who used to serve the same master as Hanshirō.

Motome came to them months ago, asking for their permission to commit Harakiri. They confer with the son of the Lord, and they agree that he is probably looking for alms like all the other Samurai have been doing ever since another Lord took pity on one, who made the request in all sincerity, and made him a retainer. Since then, many samurai have shown up at the gates of various clans, requesting permission to kill themselves in order to receive some money instead. They suggest giving him a paltry sum and sending him on his way but the son of the local lord refuses, saying that if they do that they will never see the end of penniless Ronin in this age of peace. Instead, they will force him to commit the act.

Preying upon his desperation, they twist the knife, making it seem like he's going to be made a retainer but then bluntly informing him that he will be committing Harakiri today and if not, he will be killed in dishonor. They express glee when they find out he's been reduced to selling his swords and has only his bamboo blades left. He begs them for a brief respite, probably with which to flee his fate, but they mockingly ask if he's one of those Ronin running a scam, when they thought he was a man of honor. The assembled samurai are sneering at this penniless fool, and putting his honor on the line because there is no making it out of this alive. Reluctantly, he is forced to crosswise disembowel himself using his bamboo short blade, having to repeatedly stab himself to even get the blade in, while they mockingly salute his honor as he dies one of the most awful deaths you will see in a movie, biting off his own tongue in the process.

Having been told this, Hanshirō is asked if he still wants to go through with it, the threat implicit, and he says that yes, he absolutely will. He just needs one of three men to be his second, to cleanly cut off his head. These men have been mysteriously and simultaneously sick and they send a messenger to check on them. While they wait, he asks if he can tell a story to past the time. You see, he does in fact know Chijiiwa Motome...

Harakiri is a deeply cynical but powerful work aimed at the honor culture. The central conflict of the movie is those who claim to value honor and those who actually possess it, and its themes of honor, unemployment and desperation give it a lasting quality that makes it universally relevant for a movie that was pure bomb throwing metaphor in the decades after the end of WW2. Yeah, Chijiiwa Motome dishonored himself with his plan to fake intent to kill himself in order to get money, but he was desperate. He was surrounded by men who found cruel delight in his death, despite the fact that they could have easily found themselves in the same fate if they had been made redundant by their lords passing. Where is the honor in that?

Harakiri if anything, asks a simple yet complex question: What is honor? What does it entail, what does it mean, how important is it, what's important about it and how can it be used against you by people who don't share it but see it as a means of leverage over you and status for themselves? The man who married his daughter and who he raised as if he were a son embarked on a scheme to get money to save the life of his family. Nobody even thought to ask his situation and Hanshirō comments that he never thought of selling his sword as his son in law had, and curses himself for it, because his petty honor cost him the lives of the three people closest to him. He has honor still though, and his revenge will be a moral and philosophical one.

Harakiri is one of the greats for a reason. It is wonderfully written, deftly handling political and philosophical questions and making use of in media res that isn't "Three Weeks Earlier" because you don't know how to start your story and decided to put an exciting part from later first. The fact that whatever Hanshirō has done is done, as he slowly tells this story adds tension and suspense. The past and present are expertly combined in this way. We don't know why he's here, we don't know what he has planned, we don't know what he has already done and we don't know what the Clan will do in response. They think he's full of shit and a swindler but by the end there will be no doubt as to his sincerity.

At the same time the cinematography and direction are perfect. The film is beautiful to look at even in its simplicity, and the direction is the kind that gave young New Hollywood types Film Boners at UCLA or NYU. We see what we need to in the way the makes the most impact, the studied and simple perfection of a master of his trade. When there is action, its brutal and unflinching, never sanitizing the violence. The movie is mostly unscored, using only a simple track sparingly to underline the significance of what is going on. When that sole instrument starts playing, you know shit just got real. The movie is classic cinema, emphasis on classic. A lot of these works are relevant and beautiful even to this day, and I should really highlight more going forward as I think that people overlook movies this old except for the handful that enter modern culture.

As a sidenote, I can assure you that me doing a review of a movie about someone that talks up the valor, honor and success of their clan and tries to cover up anything that rather pointedly proves that these claims are hollow lies, has no bearing to anything that may or may not be happening right now, I assure you. Especially since it involves trusted enforcers and defenders of their lord being forced to fall upon their own swords, which has nothing to do with anything right now.

I assure you.
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So, short story about when I first saw this. It was my senior year of college and I was lucky enough to have a small 1 story house on campus with a bunch of other guys. We had a decent amount of foot traffic through our house, being centrally located on campus with one of the big social stoners as a roommate, the president and VP of a houseless frat as two others, the head of the local Chorus, so on and so forth. We also had a large living room with a giant TV in it. One of my friends was taking a Japanese Film and Cinema course and I was watching all the films with him on that TV. Often times they were odder artsy films, or just ones that didn't really catch more of a modern audience. Harakiri was an exception. We started watching it, just the two of us. By halfway through the film we had maybe 11 people watching it, probably up to 16 by the end of it, taking up all the chairs, sofas, and the rest standing.

That film was damn powerful.
 
Alright guys, probably going to be updating on Sunday, since today is Athenemas, the anniversary of when I escaped from my mother's wretched womb to haunt the world of men
 
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