Love And Honor by Yoji Yamada (2006)
5 November 2007The third film in Yoji Yamada’s samurai trilogy (only a trilogy in the sense of being stories about Samurai and love in the period of decline for Samurai. This is a wonderful tale of love and sacrifice and betrayal, and like all of Yamada’s films also has some great samurai fighting, though mostly being a samurai is peripheral to the love story, and the character drama. I picked up the Taiwanese disc which has English subs and looks great, though it is of course region 3, so you will probably have to wait on this one to be able to see it in the US, and the fact that the first film in the series, the Twilight Samurai was nominated for an Oscar may help it get a release here. We can only hope. I really do need to get my DVD’s of the first 2 films back so I can get my girlfriend to watch them. Yamada is such a talented director, but he isn’t too young, I hope he keeps making films though.
Mimura Shinnojo (Kimura Takuya) is a low level samurai working for a lord. He is happily married to a beautiful and loyal wife named Kayo (Dan Rei) and they are helped by their servant Tokuhei (Sasano Takashi). Mimura is a food taster for the lord, which he thinks is mostly a ceremonial position, where the tasters sit in a dark room next to the kitchen and must take a bite of each food before it is taken to the lord. The thing is, Mimura has some shellfish, and is poisoned, and gets very sick, and the lord is barely stopped from eating it. Mimura is put unconscious and very sick, and it is thought he might die, even his annoying aunt comes to see her sick nephew. Mimura does awaken though, but he has a problem, he can’t see. They tell him he will recover, but the doctor tells Kayo he will probably never get his vision back, and Kayo tries to keep it from him, but he finds out from Tokuhei, who can’t lie to him.
REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…
Just after this on her way home Kayo runs into the head clerk Shimada Toyo (Bando Mitsugoro) who tells her if she ever needs help that he will help her. She knows what that means, so doesn’t want to do anything, but when all the relatives get together to figure out what to do with Mimura who will no longer have an income, they convince her to go to Shimada for help.
Mimura notices that Kayo has come home late a few times, and then his aunt comes to tell him her husband saw her out with another man. He doesn’t want to believe, but sends Tokuhei to follow her, and he sees her going to the hotel with Shimada. Mimura freaks out, even though she was doing it to help him, and declares his divorce, and kicks her out, refraining from killing her as she wanted.
Mimura’s friend then comes over and tells him, that in fact it was the mostly senile lord who ordered the full stipend for life for Mimura, and that Shimada didn’t do anything to help Mimura, so he basically raped Kayo. Mimura’s honor is tarnished, and he starts to train with his sword again, eventually getting to the point where he can sense where his opponent is, so he goes to his old master. Of course his master can best him, but he helps him, teaching him that if he is ok with death he can take out his opponent.
Mimura has Tokuhei send out a challenge to Shimada for the next day, and Shimada shows up, and is surprised that Mimura is doing alright, so he cheats and gets on the roof of the building nearby to jump on Mimura, but Mimura is better, and severs Shimada’s arm, but leaves him alive.
Luckily though Shimada survives, he won’t tell of the challenge, because the dishonor of losing to a blind man would be too much, and he takes his own life, so Mimura is safe and he has fought for Kayo’s honor.
At home alone with Tokuhei he talks about how he was wrong, and never should have made Tokuhei follow Kayo, because he is destined to be alone, but Tokuhei has hired a new cook, and as soon as Mimura eats it he orders the woman in, who is of course Kayo, and he quickly embraces her, because he still loves her, and of course she always loved him.
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Really just a lovely film set in the decline of the samurai era. Kayo is such a good wife, and Mimura just can’t realize it until he thinks it is too late, but luckily his servant is smarter than he in such matters, and Kayo is loyal no matter what has happened. It is very well shot with great production design, great acting, and just well done.
I can’t recommend this film more highly.
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