Series

Portions of this review were lifted from the previous Criterion Collection edition review.  Now on to the review...

After making such internationally renowned samurai period films such as Rashomon and The Seven Samurai, Akira Kurosawa did make another film, Yojimbo, with a decidedly different tone, bordering on dark comedy. The opening shot is of Sanjuro (Toshiro Mifune, Throne of Blood), a samurai without a master, who look  at a mountain, and suddenly scratches his head, as if his hair is on too tight. It's almost the breaking down of a facade, helping to show you that the film will be bit different from other Kurosawa samurai films. The introductory cards say that the film is set in the 1860s, and the samurai comes into a town ruled by rival gangs. He doesn't know this when he comes in, but the first thing he sees in town is a dog carrying a human hand. People have said that the way that this film was told reminds them a lot of the Clint Eastwood/spaghetti westerns that came out several years later, and it's easy to understand why, with the quiet main character whom you can never really tell if he's a hero or villain. He deals with some situations with a toothpick in his mouth, reminding me of Chou-Yun Fat in Hard Boiled. Kurosawa does action flicks? That's probably the best way to characterize it, but he does it well, without a lot of one-liners or lack of common sense seen within a lot of today's action films.

Let me get this out of the way right up front; I really enjoyed Memoirs of a Geisha. Now, I am certainly smart enough to understand that the film was not entirely realistic, and there were some plot developments that pushed suspension of disbelief pretty far, but I wound it charming and entertaining. It was so charming, in fact, that it was often times easy to forget that you were essentially watching a movie about whores. You can romance it all you want, but at the end of the day a Geisha is really nothing mo...e than a high-paid escort.

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is sort of the realistic companion piece to Memoirs. The story here revolves around a modern-day Geisha, where the lifestyle has moved out of the Geisha-houses and into the bars. The lifestyle is still basically the same; women are “companions” to wealthy male bar patrons, making long-term relationships with one woman. The women pay a portion of their income to the owner of the bar, and keep the rest for themselves (though most of it is spent on kimonos and personal upkeep). Our heroine, Mama, is a Geisha that is well-respected amongst her peers, but she is starting to feel the pressure of age. As she is advancing in years, she is not able to rely as much on her youthful good looks. The time has come for her to either get married or open a bar of her own. As she is so well liked, it is not too long until she has suitors offering to pay for her own bar. Now she must decide how she is to proceed with the rest of her life.