A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion Spine #116: Akira Kurosawa’s The Hid­den Fortress.

Well it has been 9 months since I last reviewed a Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion film. I sup­pose hav­ing a 7-​month old will do that to you. I had a chance to sit down last night and watch The Hid­den Fortress. I might be a bit rusty, but this film didn’t seem as high-​quality as most of Kurosawa’s out­put. The only char­ac­ter who exhibits any devel­op­ment is Princess Yuki, and although she’s the focus of all of the action, as a char­ac­ter she’s pretty sec­ondary. The two peas­ants, Tahei and Matak­ishi, are in the fore through­out the film, and their slap­stick kept the film from delv­ing into the deeper conun­drums that bound around in the wings.

Every­body is try­ing to find or save Princess Yuki, the last sur­viv­ing mem­ber of the Akizuki clan. Our two boors buf­fet about due to the tides of war and their own avarice, seek­ing either the Akizuki gold or Yuki Akizuki, as their whims dic­tate. Toshiro Mifune [play­ing Toshiro Mifune as Rotokura Mak­abe] ropes them into haul­ing the gold and the princess through, across, around [and var­i­ous other prepo­si­tions] enemy lines. Every plan Tahei and Matak­ishi ‘devise’ fails imme­di­ately, and they try to run off with the gold almost as much as they fight each other. There is one 10 minute Toshiro spear-​fight show­case show­down in which Mr. Mifune’s whit­tled fore­arms are the main scene, but the rest of the film pretty much con­sists of folks bitch­ing up and down [and var­i­ous other prepo­si­tions] myr­iad roads.

This is not to say that the film is with­out value. Kurosawa’s eye for the right fram­ing and sub­tle phras­ing is as on the mark as it ever is; stop­ping at an inn for the evening we find out that with 5 pieces of sil­ver you can either buy a good horse or a pros­ti­tute [per­ma­nently]. The ham-​fisted peas­ants live in sty-​squalor and are herded about by porcine petty lords and their pig-​headed vas­sals. The objec­tive eye indi­cates that all par­ties are a bit absurd in their human­ity. Every­one is happy with sta­tus quo except Princess Yuki, who gets her first taste of how the other 99.9% lives and gains the right­eous indig­na­tion on the behalf of her infe­ri­ors that hard-​time-​fallen nobil­ity always seem to exhibit in fic­tion. She does have nice legs, however.

I guess what sank the movie for me was the way the con­stant breaks for a bit of lev­ity under­cut the drama at the same time that Mifune’s fur­rowed dis­ap­proval killjoyed the clown­ing slap­stick [which I’m not really a fan of any­way]. Toss in a plot that isn’t all that com­pelling or orig­i­nal and 2D char­ac­ters with unchang­ing moti­va­tions and the result is that I might have enjoyed this movie if I had seen it before Star Wars [Lucas claims The Hid­den Fortress as an inspi­ra­tion for that uni­verse, but there are only very basic and tan­gen­tial rela­tions between the two]. The story prob­a­bly won’t keep you going, but the hope for the next excep­tional shot will.