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Post by klep on Aug 24, 2015 16:03:39 GMT -6
Our Movie of the Week for the final week of Samurai Month is Harakiri, and it's a much more bitter film that we end with than what we started with. Both films were attempting to deflate some of the samurai mystique, but where Seven Samurai maintained a respect for its subjects and clearly thought they were basically good people, Kobayashi's Harakiri thinks they're almost all frauds. In Harakiri, we see how the need to maintain face has led an entire samurai clan to a deep level of moral corruption, and how easily the system of bushido can be manipulated by the sadistic and the ambitious. It's also a condemnation of a system which allows its bravest warriors to suffer destitution for the heinous act of surviving the war. So what do you think about the film? Do its messages still have relevance beyond historical instruction?
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