Zatoichi

Cult cinema messiah Takeshi ‘Beat’ Kitano has of late gotten very, well, Japanese. What with all the traditional arts and crafts (Bunraki dolls, Noh drums, everything but the origami) on display in his movies recently, it’s been a bit like chancing upon an oriental fete.
But Kitano’s truck with Western modes and heroes has always been somewhat superficial. Back in the 1990s he seemed like an edgy, existentialist sort of maverick chap – hell, he even had the all black suit – but in truth, he was less Le Samurai, more the kimono-wearing variety.
Japan’s most renowned renaissance man (writer, director, comedian, producer, TV star, possibly on-set tea-boy) may officially wear the tag ‘the Japanese Clint Eastwood’, yet when the Beat went Dirty Harry in Hana Bi (or Sonatine, or Violent Cop) you knew damned well that he had a dog-eared copy of Patriotism in his back pocket and the means for a quick-fix ritual disembowelment at his immediate disposal should the need arise. And it frequently did.
His latest offering, Zatoichi, is a delirious oddity that renegotiates the ageing, mythical blind swordsman of the title (already the protagonist of some 26 movies featuring the late Japanese superstar Shintaru Katsu). Here this chivalrous butcher stumbles Mifune-style into the crossfire between two disagreeable rival gangs.
As these marauding bands of unsavoury individuals, aided by Asano’s romantic, compromised ronin, carve up a small town with true 19th Century, post-Meiji fervour, Zatoichi (essayed appropriately enough by Kitano himself) becomes the unlikely defender of a thoroughly disenfranchised bunch including a gambler, a widow and a couple of murderous geishas.
The resulting riot of martial swordplay, broad physical comedy, musical numbers and weepy flashbacks is played out as Noh theatre, hence the narrative restlessness and the pounding percussion that propels the proceedings. For the initiated this far-from-idle curiosity is a deep-breath, headlong plunge into the entire history of Japanese cinema; an extravaganza to be happily lapped-up – the well-disciplined, on-your-knees low-angles of Ozu, the seat-of-the-gods vantage point of Kurasawa’s street battles, the stargazing-from-the-gutter swoop of Mizoguchi’s melodrama, the lurid splatter of Ghost In The Shell blood-geysers and the weird musicality of Suzuki.
As for the uninitiated – well, just ride the tsunami until it hits the shore. Or take notes in time for Kill Bill Vol. 2.

116 mins. Cert IFI members. Out now