Mifune, le dernier des samouraï

I'm sure I'm not the only one who was wondering why it is they couldn't get a hold of Tatsuya Nakadai.

I feel that the approach they took with this documentary was a bit limiting. Given that "Samurai" is in the title it should come as no surprise that they, for the most part, really only talk about Mifune's roles as samurai in film. In a way it's both a documentary on Mifune and the chanbara genre as a whole. This is sort of a double edged sword for me. While I think it's valuable to provide background on the genre that Mifune is most famous for and which he in turn made popular outside of Japan, in the end it feels like you're sort of getting an incomplete picture of both him and the genre. The history lesson on the chanbara genre basically concludes with the introduction of Mifune and the history lesson on Mifune is more or less confined to his work in the chanbara genre.

All things considered, for as much as I like this documentary and am a fan of what it features, I sort of wish it were two separate documentaries. One which covers chanbara, or perhaps just jidaigeki as a whole, and one which covers Mifune a bit more comprehensively. That might be a bit more satisfying as a whole. I'm sure any fan of Mifune could understand what I'm getting at. For anyone who wants to see a documentary on Mifune, there's going to be frustration that roles like he had in 'The Bad Sleep Well', 'High and Low' and 'I Live in Fear' are basically ignored. Likewise, any fan of the chanbara genre is undoubtedly going to feel a but cheated that Tatsuya Nakadai is never referred to at all, and that the history feels incomplete.

I appreciate what this documentary is trying to do, and if you're a fan of Mifune, I would certainly recommend it. It could have been better though.