Unforgiven

Hokkaido at the beginning of the Meiji era. Jubei Kamata was a samurai who fought for the shogunate and killed a great many men. Under the new order he lives in a hut, tries to farm, and has two children. Word reaches him of a bounty offered over a woman whose face was cut. With an old friend he sets out one last time. Sang-il Lee directs. Ken Watanabe plays Jubei. The film is an adaptation of Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven from 1992. The plot is largely the same, but the ground changes, and the change gives the film a subject of its own. That subject is the Ainu. The story is set in Hokkaido, and the assimilation of the island's indigenous people by the Japanese state enters it directly: Jubei's dead wife was Ainu, and the young man with him is excluded by both sides for being of mixed descent. The Japanese equivalent of the racial question in the American original is built here. The choice of the Meiji era fits. What the closing of the frontier is to the western, the abolition of the samurai class is to Japan; in both films the hero possesses a skill that is no longer of any use. Who it is for: viewers curious about samurai cinema and cross cultural adaptation. Who it is not for: if you know the original there are no surprises and some scenes are shot for shot, and this version is longer and slower.