Like a Trail of Goldfish Dung: The Adventures of Sanjuro

Art tends to be both cyclical and reciprocal. Akira Kurosawa drew inspiration from John Ford. Sergio Leone drew inspiration from Akira Kurosawa. The result on all ends was some brilliant, beautiful, thoughtful, and often fleetingly hilarious films. Last night, I had my first encounter with the man who inspired the Man with No Name: the titular hero of Akira Kurosawa's Sanjuro.

Sanjuro is a follow-up of sorts to Yojimbo ("Bodyguard"), the film Leone re-made virtually scene-for-scene as A Fistful of Dollars. Sanjuro takes place an indefinite time in the future, with our hero stumbling upon a group of clansmen fighting a corruption problem. Or, rather, the clansmen stumble upon him, as they happened to meet in a quasi-abandoned shrine that Sanjuro was sleeping in. Sanjuro is the quintessential ronin, a masterless samurai who's not had to commit ritual suicide (we don't know what happened to his master) and is instead set to wandering. His heart is not evil; he remains a samurai and desires to do good, and fight injustice. As such, the story of Sanjuro is a simple and familiar tale of an honourable lone wolf helping those who are weaker in their time of need. But its presentation, and especially its hero as portrayed by the always wonderful Kurosawa regular Toshiro Mifune, is what makes this film special.

Sanjuro is an anomaly, a good hero with a crass manner. Early in the film, his lack of compunction towards manners is evident, and he has no fear of causing offense if it may be good to do so. For example, after saving some lives, the men ask him what reward he would like. He replies that he is hungry, and would like money for a meal. When one of the men offers Sanjuro his whole purse, Sanjuro roots through it only for the cost of a meal and gives it back - in the manners of the time and place, he is saying, "your life is worth no more than the cost of a meal", and yet, he is refusing the money not to insult but because he doesn't believe saving one's life should render the person destitute. Later in the film, he offers himself as a footstool to an old woman so that she can quickly climb a wall to get out of harm's way, and she initally refuses, because it's rude, it's debasing to Sanjuro - but he insists this rude thing be done, because it is necessary for the safety of the whole group. The original Japanese theatrical trailer includes a scene wherein the nine clansmen are following Sanjuro as he attempts a stealth manoeuvre, and in frustration he tells them, "you're like a trail of goldfish dung!" - translated for American audiences as "we're moving like a centipede!". As anyone can tell you who's seen a small fish poop, goldfish dung is a great analogy here, as the fish has to swim and wriggle to get rid of the trail. In some ways, it's an analogy for most of Sanjuro's current life. It's also a very crass analogy. Sanjuro was released in 1962, but even today, we don't typically see heroes who are both noble/good-hearted and crass - if a hero has a rude manner, there's usually some character problem as well, and he is more of an antihero. Sanjuro is, cinematically, an anomaly, but realistically, a familiar heart. And can you remember the last time you saw a hero who, after being forced to kill a room full of bad guys because of an ally's error, was so furious and upset about being forced to take those lives that he proceeded to roundly curse his allies? Most heroes who don't like to kill just shut down. Not Sanjuro.

Thematically, the film is strong in its exploration of the idea that a good sword must often stay sheathed. There are some delightful humorous infusions, particularly a running joke involving a man in a closet. And why does the original Man with No Name have a name in this film? Well, let's just say that the hospital scene from Dave Foley's The Wrong Guy is a perfect mirror of its Sanjuro inspiration. And to top it all off, there's no such thing as a bad actor in a Kurosawa film. His productions are, in every sense, holistic. You'll see some breathtakingly gorgeous camera work in Sanjuro, as well as some that may seem strange, like shots that look like they were taken by someone sitting on the floor - which they probably were. Any older films, western and eastern, retain vestiges of stage blocking as filmmakers slowly discovered cinema as a separate art form, and in Japan, traditional kabuki theatre is watched by audiences seated on - you guessed it - the floor. So that explains that.

Here's one thing I was quite mistaken of: just because you know the Man with No Name, that does not mean you know Sanjuro. The two are almost polar opposites. Blondie shares Sanjuro's hatred of injustice, but For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly demonstrated that as much as he hates injustice, he loves money more. At the end of the day (or reel), Blondie's true love is personal gain. He's a villain, and "anithero", and in many ways, he's no less evil than the men he bounty hunts. He's also rather stoic, as we westerners like our heroic men to be. Sanjuro is a whole other creature, of greater depth and a better heart (which he often wears on his sleeve). He's fascinating, tragic, and an all-around delight to watch.

Of course, this being 2008, I need to warn people that Sanjuro is both black-and-white and, unless you understand Japanese, subtitled - two things that are enough to send contemporary mass audiences fleeing. I've met too many people who flee from such criteria. Personally, I think that unless you have a reading disability or visual impairment, refusing to watch a film because of monochrome or subs is rather closed-minded and silly. Kurosawa's films are some of the greatest ever made - don't miss out on them because of stubbornness.

Sanjuro, Criterion Collection edition: it's worth your 96 minutes.