The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, November 16-22
Hara-kiri (2012)
Directed by Takashi Miike
If it seems suddenly that all the greatest movies feel preposterously relevant, that’s because the best art is, at bottom, humanist, and to a slightly lesser extent, anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian. Most of the world’s greatest artists suffered through the worst humanity had to offer. Saw lives end, civilization’s fall under rubble, and know despair when it escapes through the human eye. They learn and they listen and their fears and hopes that the past is past turn to light and become warnings and beacons. “Do not repeat these mistakes.” We do. We always do. Which brings us to Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai. It is a remake of a great liberal bloodbath directed by Masaki Kobayashi, a tiger behind the camera, a painter who filled canvases blood of the heroic. It is a repeat of a statement, echoing screams of defiance. Miike, though similarly left-leaning, is both an anarchist with his images and a sadist in his imaginings. Which makes him one of the most vital artists of the last thirty years. He does not lie to us. He does not know how. The opening act is The Seventh Victim by way of Happy Valley. A frat-like clan guilts a penniless young man into killing himself with a wooden sword when he comes implicitly begging for an opportunity to ask for money. They make him suffer for his guile and his pride. It takes him four excruciating minutes to die. A short while later, a second, older samurai shows up asking for the same thing. Only he has a story to tell. Death of a Samurai is a film of hope drowned out by agonized moans from the poorest, most pitiful humans. It’s an autumnal melodrama that turns cold, bloody and grey, with apocalyptic skies (like Ryûichi Sakamoto’s haunting score) hanging over 3D images of disorder, half-Seurat and half-Manet in their colour and arrangement. Miike presents the ripple one act sends through an underclass who just want dignity and life when one person asks for help and is met with scorn and judgment. The rich see the poor as an inconvenience. It’s only a matter of time before someone snaps. Revenge is unsatisfying and hollow, but in art we need it because life will not grant it to the rational, the non-violent. We need artists like Miike, the grisly poet of suffering, to show us our guts every now and again to remind us that we’re human before we’re rich or poor. Humans will only tolerate subjugation and derision so long, even if they know they’re entering a fight they can’t win. Scout Tafoya (November 18, 2:35pm; November 25, 9pm; November 28, 2:45pm at Film Forum’s “3-D Auteurs”)