The Twilight Samurai

Beautiful. Poetic. While it might seem contrived and drawn out, it wasn’t for me. Everything is truthfully shown here, everything is dirty yet beautifully clear. Nobody has tinted anything, all the colors in this film could be described as original. Notice when you watch, towards the end, during the fight, when the two are standing opposite each other in the room, the window – I found it the most important element in the whole scene, the paper window through which you can see the wind playing with the branches of the tree. Now I'm probably being a bit spoilerific, but I have to mention it – when he was coming home, all bloody, and she was still there, it felt like a complete happy ending, I thought that even if he died of blood loss now, it would still be a happy ending because she was there. ~ The film allows you to empathize with Seibei in a mysterious way, that you feel his joy with him, and when that happens, the ending becomes a little sad indeed. (23.12.2009)