A pleasant surprise...
Jun. 23rd, 2017 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpI was browsing through Netflix offerings and paused to examine a potential candidate titled Last Knights on the basis of seeing Morgan Freeman's face on the graphic Netflix shows for the movie. The description seemed reasonable and the duration not excessive, so I hit "play."
Spoilers follow.
At about the point where it became clear that the character played by Morgan Freeman— that of a noble lord of an imperial province—was about to be executed, I got to thinking about how his demise exhibited, broadly speaking, similarity to the death of the nobleman in the story of the 47 Ronin, a classic Japanese story with aspects that I, at least, don't understand fully, principally (I suspect) for cultural reasons.
However, when the property of the character played by Freeman is forfeited to the emperor, when his knights become "disavowed" (effectively making them masterless, making them essentially equivalent to ronin, or masterless samurai), when they are forced to work at whatever menial jobs they can find, and when the commander of said knights falls into a long, alcoholic tailspin under the watchful eye of spies sent to keep an eye on him by the emperor's official responsible for the death of Freeman's character, I no longer had any doubt as to the provenance of the story, and simply settled back to enjoy this Westernized version of the classic Japanese tale (very similar to the way John Sturges's The Magnificent Seven was a Westernized version of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai), with a weather eye peeled for how certain aspects of the story would have to be changed to adhere to Western customs.
Specifically, I was curious as to how the finale of the story would be handled. In the Japanese version, the surviving ronin all commit seppuku (ritual suicide) to atone for their retributive actions. In Last Knights, the knights do not commit suicide, but neither do they all get off scot-free to live happily ever after, either. I found the solution to be reasonable, given the plot line.
Overall, I enjoyed the movie.
Cheers...
Spoilers follow.
At about the point where it became clear that the character played by Morgan Freeman— that of a noble lord of an imperial province—was about to be executed, I got to thinking about how his demise exhibited, broadly speaking, similarity to the death of the nobleman in the story of the 47 Ronin, a classic Japanese story with aspects that I, at least, don't understand fully, principally (I suspect) for cultural reasons.
However, when the property of the character played by Freeman is forfeited to the emperor, when his knights become "disavowed" (effectively making them masterless, making them essentially equivalent to ronin, or masterless samurai), when they are forced to work at whatever menial jobs they can find, and when the commander of said knights falls into a long, alcoholic tailspin under the watchful eye of spies sent to keep an eye on him by the emperor's official responsible for the death of Freeman's character, I no longer had any doubt as to the provenance of the story, and simply settled back to enjoy this Westernized version of the classic Japanese tale (very similar to the way John Sturges's The Magnificent Seven was a Westernized version of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai), with a weather eye peeled for how certain aspects of the story would have to be changed to adhere to Western customs.
Specifically, I was curious as to how the finale of the story would be handled. In the Japanese version, the surviving ronin all commit seppuku (ritual suicide) to atone for their retributive actions. In Last Knights, the knights do not commit suicide, but neither do they all get off scot-free to live happily ever after, either. I found the solution to be reasonable, given the plot line.
Overall, I enjoyed the movie.
Cheers...
