Edo, 1630. Hanshiro, an impoverished unemployed samurai who has last seen combat over a decade ago, arrives at the castle of the Iyi clan and claims he wants to perform harakiri, suicide through cutting his stomach open with a sword, to counselor Saito, even though the latter tries to dissuade him. Out in the courtyard, Hanshiro asks for three samurais to behead him in the ritual, but when the messenger returns, he informs Saito that all three are sick. Hanshiro then tells his tale: his daughter Miho married samurai Motome, but when their child got sick, Motome went to the Iyi clan to request harakiri, hoping he would instea dbe given charity and money instead, yet Saito forced him to perform harakiri with a bamboo sword. Miho and the child died. Hanshiro thus cut the hair of the three samurai of the Iyi clan a week ago, explaining why they feigned they were sick. Saito refuses to feel regret and orders his twenty men to attack and kill Hanshiro, who puts up a good fight, and destroys their samurai armor in the process.
Included in Roger Ebert's list of Great Movies, Masaki Kobayashi's "Harakiri" is a dark and somber analysis and critique of the rigid traditions which often stray away from ethics, in this case the samurai codes which lead to fundamentalism, but also a tragic essay about transience, since these characters slowly started becoming obsolete in a new, modern era, and thus had to die out or adapt to a new society with different skills. The movie is very good, but still not that great: at a running time of 133 minutes, it is definitely overlong and overstretched, whereas its conventional dialogues are way too straightforward, proving somewhat old-fashioned today. Still, the first half flows smoothly and has a tight pace, as it slowly reveals itself to be a revenge story in which the unemplyoed samurai Hanshiro tells the counselor Saito his real reasons for wishing to talk to him, namely to avenge the death of his son-in-law Motome who was forced to perform harakiri even though he pleaded to have two days to prepare himself: his slow suicide is depicted as shockingly painful and stressful, since he had a bamboo sword (he had to sell his real sword for money to take care of his family), causing a bloody disembowelment until his head is cut off by the assistant samurai. Ultimately, Hanshiro comes to a bitter conclusion, scolding Saito: "Your samurai honor is just a facade". The movie needed kind of something more than just that to use as a justification for its conclusion, since this doesn't feel as strong today as it should, and the finale in which Hanshiro is able to fight off twenty rivals for seven minutes is equally of a stretch, but Kobayashi's ambitious tone and operatic dedication to this theme have its moments, especially in a few elegant long camera pans from left, depicting Hanshiro sitting, across the courtyard to the right, where Saito is listening, almost as if showing how Hanshiro's words are slowly getting to him. In the end, "Harakiri" is a two-hour suicide depiction of its hero who is outnumbered and physically weaker, but his 'human honor' is still stronger than the traditional honor.
Grade:+++
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