October 15 movie: The 47 Ronin Part 1. I stumbled onto this on IFC about 20 minutes in. It's really interesting to me to see movies about iconic, semi-historical people or events from other cultures. (Like Chinese movies about Wong Fei Hung.) I imagine it's sort of like someone who didn't know much about the US watching a movie about Davy Crockett or Abraham Lincoln. They might not learn that much about who Davy Crockett really was, but they'd learn something about the values we have assigned to Davy Crockett, what his story means to us.
Anyway, the 47 Ronin is a famous story about 47 samurai who avenge their lord. According to the movie, the lord was unfairly forced to kill himself after a fight with another lord. The other guy was at fault but was in good with the emperor, so the 47 ronin's lord took all the blame. I'm not exactly sure of the details because I missed the first few minutes. When I came in the lord was just killing himself and the lord's wife was instructing her servants to cut off her very long hair. I don't know if that meant she was about to kill herself too, or if she was going to be banished to a lower class or something. She isn't seen again so I guess the hair-cutting tells you everything you need to know, if you're familiar with medieval Japan.
Part I dealt with the death of the lord and the arguing among the samurai about what to do. The chamberlain, who I gather was the head samurai in charge of the household, comes up with a plan to avenge the lord, gathers the loyal 47 (actually I guess that would be 46, since the chamberlain would be the 47th), and fakes out the other samurai who aren't part of the plan.
I didn't really understand that part of the movie. All the samurai want revenge, but most of them don't trust the chamberlain enough to sign an oath of loyalty in blood before knowing his decision. He tricks the ones who didn't sign into thinking that he's a dissolute drunk who doesn't care about revenge. But they all want the same thing! Why did he have to shut them out? Clearly I was missing something. I hope Part II clears it up. Which reminds me, I have to schedule that in the DVR right now.
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