Kagemusha “Kagemusha” is a samurai drama by the director who most successfully introduced the genre to the West (with such classics as “The Seven Samurai” and “Yojimbo“), and who, at the age of seventy, made an epic that dares to wonder what meaning the samurai code — or any hum...
I saw the director's cut about twenty years after I first saw the film. Kagemusha is as magnificent now as before, but what has changed in the meantime is my appreciation of the meaning of Shakespeare's plays. The history plays and most of the tragedies were about the political dilemmas ...
Hiding Shingen’s death from the men of the Takeda clan is a difficult task for the Kagemusha, but an even riskier one is fooling thedaimyō’s own harem, all of whom would recognise that he lacks the lord’s signature shoulder scar. In a scene midway through the film, Kurosawa employs ...