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THE WAY OF
THE WARRIOR
the last samurai
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AN EPIC CONFRONTATION
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS AT
A TIME OF TURMOIL, THE LAST SAMURAI IS A MOVIE
ENCOMPASSING A LOT MORE
THAN JUST ACTION.
MAX LEVANT REPORTS.
| Edward Zwick claims to have always been fascinated by the world of the Samurai. “I first saw Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai when I was 17 and since then I’ve seen it more times than I can remember,” he says. “In that single film, there is everything a director needs to learn about storytelling, about the development of character, about shooting action, about dramatising a theme. After seeing it, I set out to study every one of his films. Although I couldn’t know it at the time, it set me on the course of becoming a film-maker.”
Now, 20 years, six films and innumerable hours of television later, Zwick has been able to put all that study to good use in The Last Samurai, the new movie starring Tom Cruise. Set in 1876, right at the moment when the Samurai faced extinction, it is an epic film contrasting the experience of two worlds which, for all that they could not have seemed more different, were undergoing a very similar process of traumatic change: those of Japan and America.
“We were struck by the parallels between the taming of the American West and the westernisation of traditional Japan,” says producer Scott Kroopf, “and we knew that there was a story to be told about how modernisation diminished the two vastly different cultures.”
For a millennium or more, Japan remained one of the most isolated places on earth. True, a couple of shiploads of Dutch merchants turned up, as they did everywhere, in the late 17th century. But, since the Japanese seemed totally disinterested in doing business with them, they soon left finding richer pickings further south in the island chain of Indonesia. And so Japan continued its magnificent isolation until the last third of the 19th century. But then, in less than a generation, the country opened its doors to the outside world and, as a result, changed for ever. In particular, the determination of the young Emperor to drag his country into the modern era spelled the end of the way of the Samurai.
This is the story of The Last Samurai, which focuses on Captain Nathan Algren (Cruise), a former Union soldier who, disillusioned by his role in the American Civil War, is paid a large sum to go to Japan to modernise the Imperial army. Standing in the way of modernisation are the Samurai, led by Katsumoto (Japanese star Ken Watanabe), a warrior similarly marginalised by the change in his own country.
“I am drawn back again and again to this historical moment,” notes Zwick, who co-wrote as well as directed The Last Samurai, and who has already made two films set around the same time-frame: Glory and Legends of the Fall. “There’s something moving, even hypnotic about observing a character going through a personal transformation at a time when the whole culture around him is likewise in turmoil.
“Most of all,” he adds, “it was a time of transition. In every culture, that moment of change from the ancient to the modern is especially poignant and dramatic. It is also wondrously visual. Each image, each landscape, each room tells the story: the juxtaposition of the old and new. A man in a bowler hat strolls beside a woman wearing a kimono. A man firing a repeating rifle faces a man wielding a sword.”
Plans to make a movie about this pivotal moment in modern Japanese history have been around for a decade or more, originally developed by Kroopf and producing partner Tom Engelman at Interscope, which they headed up until they founded Radar Pictures in 1999. But it took until 2002 for all the pieces to come together into the present project, scripted by Gladiator scribe John Logan together with Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, his partner in The Bedford Falls Company (which gave us the hit TV series thirtysomething). And it received its final impetus with the casting of Cruise, who turned out to be equally fascinated by the world of the Samurai.
“I’ve always had a deep respect and strong feeling for the Japanese culture and people,” says the actor (whose production outfit, Cruise-Wagner, also worked on developing the film). “The elegance and beauty of the Samurai - their spirit of strength, compassion and fierce loyalty, their commitment to honouring their word and a willingness to give their life for what they know is right… it was something I couldn’t resist. When Ed first sat down with me to discuss it, I just knew I had to make this picture. I have a very strong connection to its theme, as well as to the characters in the story. And Ed was so passionate and excited about it; he was like a 15-year-old boy, jumping around the room, painting the scenes with his hands. He brought that passion with him throughout production.
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