"Silent Duel", the name of this movie, still gives me the impression of the warrior spirit, as if he was still unruly, thinking quietly, quietly using a knife, or a few words , cut away many darkness in the world, and then still uninhibitedly blended into the red sunset behind the dark curtain.
This time, however, he only took an inch-long scalpel. And with the weak body of a doctor, he supported the lost souls of a generation after the defeat.
This film was shot in an era when the souls of the whole people were lost to nowhere after the defeat of Japan. The voice of the emperor's surrender came from the radio. For thousands of years, neither the shogunate nor the Western artillery had made the emperor of this island country bow his head and admit his mistake. However, it was still defeated.
In the film, in 1944, Kyouji (Toshiro Mifune) accidentally contracted syphilis due to an operation injury. In the movie, like a wounded samurai, he didn't say a single extra sentence. Just quietly trance, this tranquility makes people feel suffocated, a kind of pessimism and despair well up.
At the end of the war, Kyouji also returned to his hometown, opened a hospital with his father (Shimura Takashi), and at the same time accepted the once debauched dancing girl Bee Kishi as a trainee nurse. However, what makes people unable to face is not just his illness and his aging father, but Miss Miyosuke (Miki Sanjo), the woman who is waiting for him to return from the battlefield, the childhood sweetheart fiancee. He didn't mention his illness at all, he could only watch his lover cry to him and ask him aloud why he planned to cancel the engagement. He couldn't say that this double pain was as painful as a knife twist.
After Nurse Beegan and his father found out about his syphilis infection, Nurse Beegan's misunderstanding and ridicule, his father's scolding, these pains that should not have been borne by him were all taken up by him alone, just like Mifune in "Junior Tsubaki" The role he plays is the same. Facing those swords, lights, swords and shadows, he has no anger or despair, but just quietly narrates the reasons and does what a man should do.
However, the most painful thing still happened, Miss Miyoshitsu was about to marry someone else. On the day of their marriage, the two met for the last time at the intersection of their lives. It was snowing heavily outside the window, Gong Er faced the person he loved the most in his life, but he still didn't tell the reason for him, and he didn't indulge himself to kiss his lover. He just looked out the window and let her leave without looking back.
After Miyo continued to leave, the story finally reached its climax. In the dispensing room, Kyouji, like a rock, was crying in pain, all the pain the world had imposed on him, and he just kicked the stool down angrily. Faced with the idea that Hachigishi was willing to sacrifice his life despite his syphilis, he just said "don't waste it". In Kyouji, the samurai's stoic spirit was quietly open, and the duel of morality and desire finally came to an end in this small infirmary.
However, this is not over. Nakata's wife who infects him with syphilis, faces life after giving birth to a freak, and hope is born from the example of Kyouji; after the retirement of the old nurse, the confident single mother Higashi also starts a new one. life, nurturing the next generation of nurses. hope. A word as warm as the sun shines into the minds of the people after the defeat. There is still hope in life, and everything can be just beginning.
At the end of the film, the flowers on the desk are blooming in the wind, and even the defeated people under the gray haze will show a smile. As long as you are alive, there is still hope. Just using a scalpel and his own body to dispel the haze of despair and pain, Kyouji even surpassed all samurai.
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