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Mildly surprised...
Dec. 29th, 2013 08:55 amBut then again, few things Hollyweird does come as a true surprise, especially in the realm of movies "based on a true story."
Last Thursday, one of the other tai chi students mentioned having gone to see the new 47 Ronin movie, with Keanu Reeves. I had heard about the movie here and there, but hadn't realized it was scheduled to open on Christmas Day. This piqued my interest, as I had become acquainted with the story of the 47 ronin (a word that describes a samurai with no master) quite a long time ago, during a period of intense interest in things Japanese.
The tale concerns a group of samurai who, after plotting for two years, avenge their master's honor by killing the court official who (if memory serves) goaded their master into attacking him, an infraction that required their master to commit ritual suicide and forfeit all of his property. It is a fairly straightforward story that—among other things—underscored to me the fact that while different cultures may share similar values (after all, don't we in the West also value loyalty, persistence, sacrifice, and honor?), said cultures may have vastly different interpretations of what those values entail and different ways of demonstrating them.
Curious as to how, exactly, Reeves could be insinuated into such a classic story, I took a look at the trailers available online, and I concluded that the closest either of the two trailers I saw came to describing anything of the story line familiar to me was a clip of just a couple of seconds in length, in which a samurai says something like "there are forty-seven of us."
The rest...?
I guess one might summarize what I saw in the trailers as "the promise of a Hollywood special-effects extravaganza," and I'm still not sure what role Reeves' character plays in the story, other than it's sure to be a key role.
The movie will almost certainly rouse interest in the "real" story, which cannot be a bad thing. I'm curious, however, as to what the reaction in Japan will be to this rather extreme reinterpretation of this classic tale of bushidÅ?
Last Thursday, one of the other tai chi students mentioned having gone to see the new 47 Ronin movie, with Keanu Reeves. I had heard about the movie here and there, but hadn't realized it was scheduled to open on Christmas Day. This piqued my interest, as I had become acquainted with the story of the 47 ronin (a word that describes a samurai with no master) quite a long time ago, during a period of intense interest in things Japanese.
The tale concerns a group of samurai who, after plotting for two years, avenge their master's honor by killing the court official who (if memory serves) goaded their master into attacking him, an infraction that required their master to commit ritual suicide and forfeit all of his property. It is a fairly straightforward story that—among other things—underscored to me the fact that while different cultures may share similar values (after all, don't we in the West also value loyalty, persistence, sacrifice, and honor?), said cultures may have vastly different interpretations of what those values entail and different ways of demonstrating them.
Curious as to how, exactly, Reeves could be insinuated into such a classic story, I took a look at the trailers available online, and I concluded that the closest either of the two trailers I saw came to describing anything of the story line familiar to me was a clip of just a couple of seconds in length, in which a samurai says something like "there are forty-seven of us."
The rest...?
I guess one might summarize what I saw in the trailers as "the promise of a Hollywood special-effects extravaganza," and I'm still not sure what role Reeves' character plays in the story, other than it's sure to be a key role.
The movie will almost certainly rouse interest in the "real" story, which cannot be a bad thing. I'm curious, however, as to what the reaction in Japan will be to this rather extreme reinterpretation of this classic tale of bushidÅ?
