There are a few things to say about this movie. One is that it has basically completed its artistic attempt as a samurai film. The second is that it more or less incorporates the cult taste of director Miike in the main body of the story with tight threads. The third is that this is a better work combining authorization and typification.
But first of all, this is a samurai movie with the main theme of Tianxingdao. As for the Japanese samurai culture, I have not studied it, and I don’t know if this is considered a breakthrough. I only know that Japanese samurai must be loyal to the Lord, the kind of unconditional loyalty, regardless of whether the Lord is good or bad. In this film, due to a master who has done all kinds of bad things, this greatly angered a down-level warrior who was filled with righteous indignation. He summoned twelve warriors and decided to walk the way for the sky. After counting, waiting, and shopping, he finally got rid of the bad master. The thirteen warriors also suffered heavy casualties, only two survived, and the rest gave up their lives for justice. This constitutes the main body of the story. Its story progress is smooth and fluent, and there is almost no jerky place. This feeling is like sailing along the wind, smooth and fast, and it does not give you time to breathe. This is due to the solid foundation of Japanese filmmakers. From this point of view, many filmmakers in my country still need to put in a bit of clumsy work to straighten out the basic skills of storytelling, the narrative art.
Although the main theme of the story is very the main theme, we can see that Director Miike is not really interested in telling such a story honestly. This can be carefully tasted from the narrative of the film. For example, although the main body of the story tells it extremely smoothly, in this smoothness, it is clear that the author's mechanicalness can be seen. I don't see much enthusiasm and aura in almost all the main body of the story, and some are just the craftsmanship to complete the work. In the course of the main body of the story, I did not experience the aesthetic charm due to the coordination of various elements such as scene scheduling, camera scheduling, line design, and picture composition. However, in a few moments of detail, I suddenly saw the director's enthusiasm. After contacting the director's previous work, I will understand.
Miike is actually a director with a strong cult taste, which is simply the wild breath flowing in his blood. Although he desperately suppressed himself to speak a calm theme, in those detailed passages, his bloody taste was still unconsciously revealed. Even though they had tried hard to restrain themselves, the bites of blood sprayed out were still so fishy. So we saw the flesh and blood corpses in the fighting scene, the girl whose limbs were chopped off by the perverted master, the living people who were used as targets, and the dark spiritual world of the perverted master. In particular, the outline of the spiritual world of the perverted master constitutes the biggest breakthrough of this film. It is the main reason that makes this movie have different colors.
In fact, it is precisely because of the shaping of the image of this horribly bad lord, that the film has taken a small step towards authorship. This master is lustful and cruel, indiscriminately killing innocents, committing adultery and captivity, and doing all kinds of evil, so bad that it can't be bad anymore. However, why is this person so bad? The director designed him because of his nihilistic attitude towards life. Because he feels that life is empty, meaningless, and boring, he will pursue all kinds of sensory stimulation as his life goal. The highest peak of sensory stimulation is abnormal behavior. So there are all kinds of abnormal behaviors as above. He is still alive, but actually dead. He never died again, because he hadn't experienced the feeling of death yet. So when he experienced being assassinated, he didn't turn around in fear and ran away, but shouted in excitement. Hold! This is so enjoyable. Such a bloody assassination is extremely difficult to see in his steady daily life. Compared to his usual bad things, such a big scene of assassination is exciting enough. So he wanted to thank the samurai for his assassination. The sword light and blood shadow on this day gave a stimulus that had never been seen in his life, so he shouted in excitement. In his life, he will definitely remember this day firmly.
All in all, this is a warrior film of different colors with nihilism as the background, the awe-inspiring justice of the heavenly path as the main body, and the cult fun as the embellishment. At the end of the film, the surviving samurai wanders on the battlefield with corpses all over the field, and is reluctant to leave for a long time. Has he also experienced the power of nothingness?
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