As the Zatoichi series approached the middle point of its decade-plus theatrical run, the strain of generating fresh reasons for the blind swordsman to interrupt his itinerant wanderings in order to help the oppressed and unfortunate became a little more apparent with each passing episode. At least, that's the impression I got when watching Zatoichi and the Doomed Man, the eleventh installment in a chronicle that reached 25 volumes in 1973 before transforming itself into a TV series. I have yet to see any of the films that come after this one, and I will trust that the variety and cinematic flourishes continue to yield new surprises and pleasures as I move forward. But to be honest, this offering felt pretty much like it could have been an episode of that television program, going by the plotting, structure and a 77 minute run time. If it weren't for the richly atmospheric final 15 minutes, consisting of a long and drawn-out set piece that takes place in a fog-shrouded seaside shipping village, with the most brutally prodigious body count that I can recall seeing in a single climactic scene in this series, I would say that the film really didn't require or even deserve the big screen treatment.
Which isn't to say that Zatoichi and the Doomed Man is a "bad" outing by any means. There are some highly amusing moments to be enjoyed, especially for those who enjoy the comedic aspects of these tales, when Zatoichi's newest acquaintance, a roguish wandering monk named Hyukutaro decides to capitalize on their friendship by posing as the notoriously lethal masseur, gambler and wielder of the legendary cane sword. His grotesquely inept and self-serving impersonation of the Zatoichi we've come to know and love by this point is rather brief, but still quite funny for the few moments we're allowed to see before the fraud is uncovered, and his unexpected encounter with the real Zatoichi produces a few laugh-out-loud moments. But those scenes also serve as evidence of how close to self-parody the series was already becoming by this point. The same can be said for other examples of Zatoichi's ever-ascending invincibility - the palpable lack of any sense of danger even when he's surrounded by a dozen or more sword-wielding assassins. Or his inexplicable prowess at performing deeds of skill - like shooting bullseyes on swinging wooden targets, guided only by his sense of hearing - that would put the sharpest-eyed, most accomplished archers to a supreme test if they were required to replicate the demonstration. Even the central storyline, of an innocent man framed to take the rap for capital crimes by friends he trusted so that they could pursue their corrupt graft and gambling schemes feels transparently formulaic by now. The burden of loading three films into theaters over the course of 1965 weighs heavily on the creative efforts, obviously.
I understand that this is all delivered up to us for the sake of escapist entertainment, and I'm happy to accept it on those terms. But even with the inclusion of a requisite few moments of paint-by-numbers meditative moments, where Zatoichi contemplates the obstinate tendency of powerful men toward deceit and hypocrisy and laments the pattern of disturbance and death that his assistance of the less fortunate inevitably results in, I don't get the same sense of genuine consequence that helped earlier episodes in this series rise above the generic expectations that originally held me back from digging into the series in the years prior to Criterion's box set release last fall. I'm still enjoying the discovery, but it feels like the element of frivolity is becoming a lot harder to block out. We'll see what future iterations of the Zatoichi saga have in store.
Next: Tokyo Olympiad
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