As the sixteenth installment in a long-running series, Zatoichi the Outlaw does manage to carve out a memorable distinction for itself by introducing a few new elements to the manner in which these films tell their stories. The audience is promptly notified at the very beginning of the movie, after a shot of Zatoichi's familiar profile as he passively munches on a snack, that this is "the first feature of Katsu Productions." Though the new episode was still distributed through the Daiei Company that practically owed its continued existence to this profitable franchise, placing Shintaro Katsu's name at the top of the production credits implied that his involvement and creative control now extended without a doubt beyond merely his function as the lead actor of the eponymous hero of the series. What we get from this new direction is an interesting mix of increasingly graphic violence, a more complex plot and timescale than typical episodes that had preceded this one, and an extended foray into political controversies that seems quite pertinent to the climate of social unrest that swept across many societies during the year in which the film was made.
That last aspect of the film is the one that sticks with me the most after a quick pass through it last night. The early scenes strike a tone reminiscent of the closing moments of Seven Samurai as we see peasants working in a rice paddy, chanting in unison to both pass the time and to inspire their steadfast unified effort. The lyrics of their song extol them to a virtuous and disciplined life, abstaining from gambling, drinking and whoring, pastimes that many of their impoverished neighbors indulge in as a reprieve from the hard labor that otherwise occupies the rest of their lives. The farmers have fallen under the sway of Ohara, a charismatic organizer and visionary whose vision of collective power and self-determination echo the more positive expressions of socialist and communist solidarity that was definitely in vogue during the left vs. right cultural clashes of the late 1960s. In contrast to Ohara's message, we observe the cynical machinations of yakuza crime bosses Asagoro and Suga (played with cadaverous menace by the great Ko Nishimura), who each have their own methods for keeping the working class bogged down in a mire of poverty, indebtedness and mindless dissolution that simultaneously disempowers the poor and enriches the privileged in a manner that seems perfectly natural and in keeping with the usual order of things.
As we've come to expect with each new entry in the series, Zatoichi's endless wanderings land him in the middle of this local manifestation of ubiquitous suffering, ignorance and deprivation. What makes his function a bit different here is that he initially appears to be a willing accomplice to the regional crime lords - not as a deceptive ruse to come to the aid of some poor folks that he's already befriended, but just as a way to establish a bit of comfort and safety for himself in what definitely appears to be a hostile environment. I think that's the basis for the title Zatoichi the Outlaw. It's that early portion of the film where he dwells for a longer period of time than usual in knowing complicity with the figures who will, naturally, be revealed as the villainous bad guys well before we reach the 90 minute mark that pretty much wraps up the action here.
As I also mentioned above, but will now elaborate on a bit more, Zatoichi the Outlaw shows a determination to keep up with expanded freedoms (and enhanced audience expectations) to portray horrendous injuries more explicitly on the screen. Bright spurting blood, sliced up wounds, amputations and even a beheading punctuate the action sequences more boldly than we've seen before in the series. It's undoubtedly driven by a need to keep up with the pace of other chanbara films of the era that titillated audiences with unhinged brutality that would have been considered too graphic and impermissable just a few years earlier. Not all of the effects hold up that well by today's standards, but I'm hardly the kind of gore-hound who gets upset by a lack of "realism" in such scenes. As clumsily as a few of those shocking moments are executed, I actually appreciate the move toward a greater degree of visual intensity in portraying the horror and suffering of death by the sword. Such fatal encounters had become almost cartoon-like and sanitized after a dozen or more episodes into the series.
The inherent darkness of Zatoichi the Outlaw extends well beyond the blood-soaked tableaux, and into the framing and visual compositions of numerous scenes. Even on Blu-ray, the palette is murkier than I recall from recent installments, emphasizing deep blacks, shadows and isolated patches of light. Many scenes take place at night or in dimly lit interiors, and overall the cinematography feels less like a brightly colored mid-Sixties TV production than I might have otherwise expected based on some of the preceding Zatoichi films. Similarly, the extended timeline of the narrative stretches out over quite a few months, perhaps even a year or more, rather than the compressed "in and out of town in a week or two" framework of a typical Zatoichi opus.
For reasons that don't really make sense to me, even after reading the arguments put forth, this particular episode seems to rank low on the list of many of the series most dedicated fans. At least, that's the impression I got from running through the IMDb User Reviews just now. It might be the case that if I watched them all in a condensed time period, this one might fail to register as strongly as some of the other offerings, but there was enough difference, freshness, vitality and intrigue in this one to reward my attention and to satisfy my curiosity as to where the series would go next. I'm ready for Zatoichi's saga to take a grim, maybe even morbid turn, as he steps and staggers his way through the dregs of a society that finds itself gradually succumbing to a dark and dangerous malignancy at its core that even its noblest heroes and most upstanding reformers are powerless to hold at bay.
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