At the level of spectacle, KAGEMUSHA is a sight to behold. Color-coded armies crossing grand landscapes, psychedelic images of battle, a mysterious rainbow framed againt the tumult of war, and dozens and dozens of horses galloping along fog-addled castles appear straight out of Middle Earth. Kurosawa didn’t shoot a film, he painted a majestic mural. It’s visionary as it is panoramic, artistic as it is cinematic. And yet, for all its sweep and grandeur, it’s unfortunate the film lacks the internal excitement deserving of its epic historical scope. Kurosawa trades intimacy for magnitude, and the result is a formally rigid balloon of a film, something so in love with the aesthetics of samurai combat that it doesn’t make any room for samurai personality or character. 

The perspective is so cold and impersonal, in fact, that much of the film is spent observering large circles of men discussing military strategy and courtroom politics in the same way Jedis discussed space taxes in THE PHANTOM MENACE. We rarely “see” drama unfold onscreen, but rather “hear” about it through inflated dialogue, offscreen events, and people reminding us what’s happening in the plot, most of which sounds like footnotes out of The Silmarillion. There are compelling ideas, like the double who must assume the identity of his lord to forestall enemy attacks. There are engrossing moments, like the oil-painted dream sequence that conjures up a ghost-obssessed identity crisis. Such ideas and moments work through historical abstraction, but feel about as distant as a ritual performed without context.

Pauline Kael gets it exactly right when she says: “The style is ceremonial rather than dramatic; it’s not battle that Kurosawa is interested in here but formations in battle regalia.” 

Such regimented focus on the assembly of warlords, their plans and rituals, as opposed to the drama of their relationships, makes KAGEMUSHA feel like a well-oiled plot of bureaucratic machinery. It’s a warm, splashy piece of art that ironically feels frozen in its own mechanical power. 

Characters are stiff, dialogue is chilled, and the narrative on display is so uninvolving that it actually doesn’t matter which clan wins in the end. We’re told repeatedly that the survival of the Takeda clan is of utmost importance, so important in fact that great lengths are discussed on how to transform this low-brow criminal into a high-brow imitation of a respected criminal. We keep “hearing” how important this transformation is, and the more we “hear” about it the less convinced we are that any transformation will actually take place. This is a strange position for Kurosawa to occupy, because the film has no connection to the kind of charm, charisma or character development that made up films like SEVEN SAMURAI or YOJIMBO. It’s actually closer to the coldness of THRONE OF BLOOD, only lacking the same moral questions and cautionary stings explored there.

KAGEMUSHA is a disappointment not because of its length, but because of what it does with its length to keep the viewer as far away from its heart and soul as possible. Colder than the coldest work of Bresson and Ozu combined, it magnifies a vision so physically muscular yet spiritually cool it almost wants to keep you at arms length to reinforce specific thematic elements. Perhaps Kurosawa thinks that such distancing will reach us at a deeper level, mirroring the distance between the double and the warlord he’s impersonating. On an intellectual level, this feels enticing; at the narrative level, it feels boring. 

We aren’t made to care about anyone in this story, and so at most KAGEMUSHA becomes an abstract rumination on history, something so lost in the bigness of its vision it doesn’t know how to tether itself to the earth. This is all good though, because as my friend John points out, this is a “trial run for his next movie Ran,” a movie that actually learned from the failures of this one and talks not only the talk, but walks the walk.

Kurosawa Ranked