Wild boar trying in vain to escape

Rating: Null/10 (13 December 2002)

The movie begins with a wild boar trying in vain to escape in wilderness from its hunters. The rest of the movie is about one of its hunters, an old warlord, fleeing from his own title-hungry sons. This warlord makes a bad judgment when he divides his territory between his two disloyal sons and denounces the third (and the youngest) son for his pungent and straightforward talk about this decision. Very soon, the old warlord recognizes his folly when, first his eldest son and then his second son, asks him to surrender his title and submit to their authority. The desire to be the sole in-command has made these two each other's enemy too. The result is bloodshed and gore. The old man is driven to insanity by his sons' atrocities, the loss of his loyal soldiers and wives and also the phantoms of his own cruelty in his victorious past. The youngest son comes to his rescue in the end, but he too is ambushed by his elder brother. In the end, none is left of the family and the beneficiaries are other smaller warlords, who stood on the sidelines and made their final move when the only remaining son was weakened and surrounded.

The movie is punctuated with great performances, grand war scenes, ruthless bloodshed, beauty of Japanese wilderness and above all, director Akira Kurosawa's knack for perfection. He excels in his strong depiction of various themes of the movie such as humanity wasted by war, wretchedness of old-age guilt, insensitive desire for revenge and efforts to overcome hatred through religion (Buddhism). The movie is in Japanese, yet the translated subtitles convey the message with great intensity. The message of the movie is loud and clear: Gods can not save us (men) from ourselves'. The inevitability and consequences of power struggles and resulting wars make this movie an eternal contemporary.

Verdict: The movie publicity literature claims this movie to be Kurosawa's personal pick'. After watching this almost 3 hours long epic, I don't find that claim difficult to accept. The only downside is that the movie, at times, appears too long.