Leave it to Kiyoshi Kurosawa to make a film that feels like something both new and expansive for him, just as it also contains the same passionate attention to detail that ensures nobody could have made this film in this exact way other than him.
An adaptation of the novel of the same name by Honobu Yonezawa, “The Samurai and the Prisoner” sees the prolific modern auteur offering his own personal stamp on the historical epic. But in the same way that the recent “Chime” and “Cloud” are thrillers that are also much more than their easily appointed genre terms, so too is this. Rather than a detriment, the unwieldy and unclassifiable nature of the film is what makes it worth getting lost in.
It’s a sweeping yet intimate film, taking on big questions facing 16th-century Japan by filtering them through a series of characters mostly just talking in rooms or out in some rather stunning landscapes. It’s mysterious yet earnest, playing almost as if the best parts of a “Knives Out” film were transported back in time, and with characters all grappling with what the right thing to do is. It’s full of shots that are often defined by bursts of violence that are also measured and wonderfully composed, with some of the tableaus Kurosawa creates almost resembling paintings.
Running nearly two and a half hours and spanning multiple seasons, it’s also something that frequently feels like a staging of a play. With extended shots of characters discussing the painful details of war, murder, family and legacy, it’s easy to feel the weight of history bearing down on each of them. Yet, it’s also a film that feels like it’s constantly hurtling onwards, as, for every scene that Kurosawa lets play out for several unbroken minutes, many others get sliced and diced together in rapid succession. Even when there are some more jarring moments that don’t always cut together as cleanly as you’d hope for them to, there’s always some new sequence looming just around the corner that Kurosawa is setting his sights on.
Premiering Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival, the film opens with text that lays out the state of this tumultuous era — in a time that is about to be further upended. The one attempting to navigate this is Lord Murashige Araki (Motoki Masahiro), who has risen against the cruel Nobunaga Oda and is currently facing attacks within his own castle. Things start to get dire when a series of murders, all of which initially seem almost impossible, start to occur.
Intent on figuring out who is doing them and why, Murashige takes on the role of detective to get to the bottom of it. One early scene sees him trying out various potential possibilities of how someone could have landed a fatal blow against someone, but left no evidence of the weapon that they might have used. It’s riveting to watch just as it proves to only be the beginning. Even when he gets to what he thinks is the truth, another strange death will soon occur, and he’ll have to continue investigating just as the broader war continues to remain a present threat.
Without tipping off anything, one key part of the film seems to be that, for all the ways that Murashige is dedicating himself to getting to the truth, he is always missing something. He’ll get close, maybe even very close, only to still find whatever he is searching for slipping through his fingers. He continually goes down to the dungeon to consult with the film’s titular prisoner Kanbei Kuroda (Suda Masaki), a strategist that he is using as a hostage and refusing to kill despite him begging him to so his son doesn’t face consequences over him being believed to be a traitor. Their conversation becomes, in many ways, the heart of the film, but they also could very easily be the others’ downfall.
As the two engage in longer and longer dialogues, often centered around the killings, though increasingly about other topics as well, you start to get the sense that Murashige doesn’t have anyone else he can really talk to. When this is pointed out to him, he rejects this a bit too strongly, making clear that for all the strength he puts forth, there’s still much about what is happening that is rattling him. When he makes a discovery that challenges his power and the harm that can come from how men, even those supposedly trying to fight tyranny as he is, wield it, it’s we as an audience who are subsequently rattled.
It’s then the way that Kurosawa merges the personal and the political, the procedural and the profound, that makes “The Samurai and the Prisoner” into something that feels incredibly urgent despite it all taking place hundreds of years ago. There’s little in the way of action, save for a couple of more brief sequences that still are incredibly well-staged, and it’s one of the director’s more talky films. It could easily lose people in this, but there’s a rhythm to it that makes it impossible to look away.
Because no matter what is playing out, be it a massive battle or a small conversation, Kurosawa shoots the hell out of all of it. In each mesmerizing move of the camera or precisely-framed shot, he draws us in closer and closer until we can practically feel the grass under our feet while he simultaneously keeps his sharp eye on the bigger picture. From the stunning opening all the way to the closing frames as the characters wander off one final time, it’s a remarkable, restrained and ultimately riveting film that earns every moment and then some.
