SAMURAI WARRIORS 4-II Crack Only
Angie Troia
This is an awful period for the nation, picking itself up after being partially flattened. It is a period of helpless acceptance of loss. It is a period of struggling to find reasons where there are none. It is also a time of searching for scapegoats, as the hapless officials and workers at Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) battle like latter-day samurai warriors to get control of a disaster that their predecessors (and the geo-scientific advice on which they and insurers drew about the probability of these events in this region) failed hopelessly to predict.
That's fine with me, but if you're going to keep pointing out the cinematography, I'm going to have to respond. You're not the only one who's taken a class you know.
Kambei refers to himself as a "ronin" which literally means "wave-man" or "one who rides the waves" but which figuratively means, as we all know from the Robert DeNiro movie, a lord-less samurai, forced to work. Hearing a character say it puts an associated image in the child's mind with the vocabulary word.
I also think they might be interested in the boarding-house scenes, with their wooden beds, leaky roofs, and communal fires. It serves, to some extent, to show how the cities of Japan were in this era. The other (always shirtless) residents are coolies, laborers in the city, and the contrast between them and the "country-mouse" rural peasants could be useful. Finally, the crux of the first act, when Kambei is convinced that he will help the farmers, occurs when one of the coolies points out that the peasants are paying the samurai in bowls of rice, but they themselves are eating the inferior millet. A nice illustration of different crops popular in Japan to an audience unfamiliar with millet. Wretched as they are, they are giving their best and taking the worst themselves. Not only does this illustrate something about Japanese cultural values, but it adds more fuel to the pity/contempt question. Kambei's opinion of the villagers is clearly changed, but is Kurosawa's? The very next scene shows Manzo back in the village, fretting about his daughter when the samurai come to town.
Anyways, I was thinking that if you could figure out a way to show all the different classes represented in this movie without throwing out your lesson plans for a week, then you could break the class into groups to write and perform skits where students were laborers, farmers, samurai, etc. explaining each's social position, lifestyle, clothing, etc.
Another favor Kurosawa does us in the boarding-house scenes is give us a sense of how dark it must have been. Of course, he does that with many giant expensive lights, but nevertheless we are transported back to a world lit by fire. Even during daylight (if it isn't raining) there is very little light inside the wooden house, and at night the only light source they have is burning oil in a brazier. This might bring the era to life for students.
Another scene that does that, while explaining a lot about samurai culture, is the one that begins with two samurai (we can tell because of the costumes) who seem to be angrily gardening. It turns out they're using their swords to make fake swords out of bamboo for a mock duel. There is very little dialogue as the two men size each other up, and it seems fairly faithful to how much posing and little actual swordplay made up a medieval Japanese duel. Anyway the two men strike (what would have been) fatal blows at the same time.
Or do they? One of the men is certain he has won, for even though he wasn't the first to strike, his was more powerful because his opponent had led with his arm. The better samurai spotted this, and was able to wait and hit much harder. Since it was a fake duel, he could afford to be hit. You can replay the action the DVD and see that this is actually what happened, albeit in the blink of an eye. Anyways, the loser is unconvinced and demands satisfaction. In a real duel, he is killed. And here, just as he did earlier with Kambei's killing of the thief, all of a sudden Kurosawa puts the action in slow motion as the body falls to the ground.
I think our students, especially the boys, will have their interests piqued by this scene, and it once again accurately portrays aspects of samurai. Honor, skill over style, the sin of pride, etc.
akira my mastah,
m@x
Once the samurai reach the village, we get more of a sense of village life.
Because of the townspeoples' filial piety, all of its ultimate decisions are made by a blind old patriarch known as the Grandad. When we first meet this character, he tells of a previous time when the samurai were in power, idolizing these brave defenders of right. We see the town alarm that is just a hammer and a piece of wood. We see the father-daughter dynamic, as Manzo tells his daughter Shino that she must cut her long beautiful hair and pose as a boy, a shame as great if not greater than a samurai cutting his topknot. Incidentally, the townspeople disapprove of Manzo's actions because he is thinking about his needs over those of the village. And in Kikuchiyo's anti-samurai rant, we learn about the darkside of the heroized warriors and their tragic taking advantage of farmers. Just more details we can use to illustrate the period.
Incidentally, I'd seen this movie years ago and before watching it this time, I wondered if the acting in the film would be too overwrought for students to take seriously. Shino wails and beats her breast when she is asked to cut her hair. Kikuchiyo screams and spits and rails. Even laughing at the jokes seems to go on too long. But after this viewing, I think the acting works only because the cinematography is so grand as well. In every scene, in every shot, the visuals match the power of the performances. Yohei and the rest of the villagers would seem to be overacting in any other setting, but against a brilliantly composed deep focus wide shot of the town, it seems to be just right.