Review: The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi

This is the closest Kitano Takeshi is ever likely to come to making a full-fledged musical, and it’s a great one at that.

The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi
Photo: Miramax Films

Kitano Takeshi’s The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi is every bit as violent as Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. But the difference between the two films is obvious: Gibson uses violence to oppress his characters while Kitano uses it as a liberating force.

Zatoichi was a blind swordsman whose adventures were celebrated in Japan via a series of long-running films and TV specials starring the legendary Katsu Shintarô. Kitano’s take on the story is gory, even gratuitous, and though the blood-splatter is sometimes uncomfortable and marred by less-than-stellar CGI during some sequences, Kitano philosophically likens the spectacle of carnage to a restorative spiritual ritual, recalling both the fervor of Aleksandr Dovshenko’s Earth and playfulness of Rouben Mamoulian’s Love Me Tonight?

Zatoichi is a work of formal delirium and its every frame threatens to burst at the seams. For Kitano, violence is the meta of his films. In his 1997 masterpiece Fireworks, it’s a canvas, but in Zatoichi, it’s also a musical instrument. Naturally, the blind Zatoichi (Kitano) uses sound to connect to the world outside his head, and at times it’s as if the people around him are more than happy to guide him on his way. Behold the sight of farmers plowing the earth with their hoes, subversively synced to Suzuki Keiichi’s outstanding tribal score (fans of Sasha and John Digweed will remember the pop star’s killer “Satellite Serenade”).

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The plot may be weightless—something about two geishas joining forces with Zatoichi to avenge the death of their family—but there’s no mistaking the film’s philosophical profundity. Kitano contemplates a strange, seductive relationship between the space inside Zatoichi’s head and the sounds of the world outside, and in the guise of an almost-musical. This is violence as a political act of restoration, a means of healing and engaging people spiritually in the present, and it all unravels as a spectacle of musical tribalism with an existential kick.

Score: 
 Cast: Kitano Takeshi, Asano Tadanobu, Natsukawa Yui, Ookusu Michiyo, Taka Gadarukanaru, Daike Yuuko, Tachibana Daigorô, Kishibe Ittoku  Director: Kitano Takeshi  Screenwriter: Kitano Takeshi  Distributor: Miramax Films  Running Time: 116 min  Rating: R  Year: 2003  Buy: Video, Soundtrack

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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