What are your thoughts on the ending? I watched this one very tired and hungover so I don't think I got as much as I should have. Do you think the message is that the evil "won" in the end? I love Kurosawa and I will have to re-watch this one to do it justice.
shareSpoiler ahead.
In simple terms, yes, evil triumphed in the end. In a broader sense, evil won the battle, but lost the war. After all, Iwabuchi killed his son in law, lost his children's love, and was forced to resign simply to avoid the demise he had brought upon others.
Thanks for the reply. I can see your thought process for sure. I will have to re-watch it again, since it's been awhile since my original post and the movie is a bit hazy now. :)
shareThe first twenty minutes of this film is full on overload, so I can understand how you may have been hungover toward the end. ☺ The ending is just as quickly thrown at the viewer. Kurosawa is a really cool director and multiple viewings of his stuff always sheds new light on almost anything. He's one of the few directors whose films I can re-watch and not feel like it's a groundhog-day situation. 😜 Mifune is a great muse for Akira's ideas.
shareKurosawa was a genius, and that is a word that I use sparingly. And yes, Mifune was definitely a great muse. :)
shareRIP both Akira and Mifune. Sad sigh, but Criterion has done a great job continuing the story of these icons of Japanese film quality and it's wonderful self ability to inspect itself for better and worse. Said sparingly. Wink.
shareNote: I love this movie, it's a 9/10 for me, I just watched it again on TCM. However.....(you knew that was coming, right?).......
Instead of the real Nishi explaining how the real Itakura and Wada and Muriyama died, I wish they had SHOWN us. I get the feeling that VP Iwabuchi was going to have a much-deserved "accident" on his way to exile.
Great movie, great script, some incredible acting by Toshiro Mifune (when he tells Yoshiko his life story in the cave especially), Kyoko Kagawa as Yoshiko and Mayasuki Mori as VP Iwabuchi, perfect ending.
I think that's a really good way to put it. The end where Iwabuchi says he hasn't slept well: it's so simple and wonderful and encapsulates the message that he "won" at the price of his soul essentially, and it's the price Nishi wasn't willing to pay. Really love it.
shareI don't know man...
He wasn't exactly a spring chicken with ambitious future plans ahead of him, so retirement doesn't seem cruel.
Also he didn't seem to care for the son's love anyways and used his daughter as a tool to find Nishi.
Oh and I have high doubts that killing his son-in-law is something Iwabuchi would give another thought about.
Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down and a Wagging Finger of Shame
Also, Iwabuchi is not the mastermind of the whole corruption loop. If you see the credits, he is actually the vice-president.
The company's real president and/or owner is the unseen man that speaks to him only through telephone (notice how humble and obedient he sounds in the final scene). This is rather pathetic, because it basically means that Iwabuchi betrayed his son and daughter, murdered people indirectly, stole high amounts of money, bribed, and manipulated his employees into commiting suicide (not to mention all the other people that will dare to chase him in the future) and soiled his own name by order and command of his boss: the unseen president.
He destroyed his own personal life simply to become a puppet, a slave. It doesn´t matter if how much money and properties he owns, he is alone now, he can no longer "sleep well".
I found the ending to be pretty upsetting. I did not expect such a downer. For the main character and his efforts to be so utterly defeated in every way... it left a bad taste.
But I suppose it's Nishi's own fault. In order to fight evil he needed to become evil, and he wasn't able to do that. He should have noticed Wada was becoming a danger to his plans, and also should have gone through with his plan to kill Shirai. He didn't have what it took to defeat them, but he came so close. The scene with the blood soaked car was hard to look at.
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