Asia House Pan-Asia Film Festival review: Unforgiven
A still from Unforgiven directed by Sang-il Lee which was screened in London and Glasgow during the Asia House Pan-Asia Film Festival
Asia House Pan-Asia Film Festival review: Unforgiven
24 February 2014
This is an exquisitely beautifully told story, led by Ken Watanabe’s powerful presence and superb acting. Shot in Hokkaido’s magnificent vast and tranquil landscapes, it transports the viewer to Japan’s 1880’s post Edo shogunate Meiji period, at a time when the Japanese government was attempting to open up these northern lands – once called Ezo – by driving their native Ainu people out.
In this remarkable Japanese remake of Clint Eastwood’s classic Western tale of vengeance and loyalty Unforgiven, director Sang-il Lee – winner of the 2007 Japanese Academy Best Director and Best Screenplay Awards for Hula Girls – has Watanabe take on the Eastwood role, as notorious ex killer-samurai of the shogunate, Jubei Kamata. After having fought and won over the Government in numerous scarring and bloody battles, Jubei had disappeared, fleeing to these northern derelict lands, to marry an Ainu woman and toil the land to feed his wife and children.
However, the death of his beloved wife – to whom he had promised never to kill again – aggravated by the burden of poverty, leads Jubei to accept his old shogunate friend’s offer to take on a bounty killing, avenge the Ainu and challenge the Government’s encroaching ways. With astounding delicacy, Lee’s Yurusarezaru Mono slowly, sensitively and powerfully culminates towards Jubei’s final triumphant and passionately violent expression of redemption.
Unforgiven was selected to be screened in the Special Presentation section at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.
Title of film: Yurusarezaru Mono, which means ‘A Thing That Can’t Be Forgiven’ in Japanese
Directed by: Sang-il Lee, winner of the 2007 Japanese Academy Best Director and Best Screenplay Award for Hula Girls
Released: Japan, 2013
Starring: Ken Watanabe famed for his roloes in The Last Samurai, Shanghai, Inception, Memoirs of a Geisha
Running Time: 135 minutes
Subtitles: in English with original language in Japanese
See it if you like: The Last Samurai
Type of film: Japanese style Western
Key selling point of film
Exquisitely poetically shot, displaying some of Hokkaido’s most transporting landscapes, creating a background of stillness against which raw violence and phenomenal acting is played out to faultless directing queues.
Weakness
There are times when the pace is a bit slow as some of the scenes drag on a little bit more than necessary.
Plot summary
Jubei Kamata, an ageing samurai in feudal 1880s Japan, who has left his crimes under the former Edo shogunate behind him, faced with poverty and lured by the possibility of redemption, allows an old friend to persuade him to take on a bounty hunter job.
Anne-Fabienne.Raven@asiahouse.co.uk
The UK premiere of Unforgiven was screened during the 2014 Asia House Pan-Asia Film Festival. Find out more about the Asia House Pan-Asia Film Festival programme here.
