|
One fan is Jerry Lewis, who in The Big Mouth elucidates the affinities between Kabuki and the clown's art. A bit of checkpoint espionage just after the end of the war, the inspired young Akira Kurosawa imagines it in the 12th-century as a poker game in a bonsai garden. Benkei the bodyguard (Denjiro Okochi) and his stout men in the Kaga woods disguised as itinerant priests, the feminine figure under the sedge hat is Yoshitsune himself. "I guess a fight with his brother is a big deal for a shogun," mutters the bumbling porter (Kenichi Enomoto), still he wonders if the whole thing "could be solved simply with a punch or two." The mission is to escort the lord through inhospitable terrain, the disguise is put to the test at the barricaded border before the magistrate (Susumu Fujita), who respects an adroit bluffer. (What's a monk doing with a sword? "It helps us clear the wilderness in our austerities for attaining truth.") A perfect hour of suspense and slapstick, mostly a single Toho set plus memories of The Lost Patrol and Gunga Din. Imperial sangfroid and plebeian double-takes provide the pantomiming poles, the warrior's booming laughter lifts the adventure to tall-tale realm while the jester's timorous grimaces ground it in earthy vaudeville. (The straight man of choice is a burly, bushy-bearded hulk who resembles Paul Bunyan in Buddhist robes.) Spiritual armor and blank scrolls, it all dissolves to a sake feast and a spastic jig before a painted landscape scrim. "Even though the waterfall roars, even though the sun shines, we continue without rest." Kurosawa rewards the joker left behind with a grand composition at dawn, he later crops up in The Hidden Fortress and Ran. With Takashi Shimura, Masayuki Mori, Akitake Kono, and Yoshio Kosugi. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |