The Last Samurai
Some movies like to stay within the realm of historical fact, possibly bending the truth to simplify a story, but not this film. The “history” provided in The Last Samurai was heavily altered or made up to provide the average American insight into a culture that is rarely seen outside of it’s own country. This film never happened in real life.
Tom Cruise plays Nathan Algren, a soldier tortured by his past of slaughtering Native Americans. He is deemed a “hero” as he was in the Battle of Gettysburg and was under the command of General Custer. He is hired to train soldiers in Japan, a country trying to become westernized. His regiment is not ready when they are ordered into battle, illustrated in a scene that bares resemblance to a scene in Glory. (A scene in which Matthew Broderick’s character simulates a stressful battle condition to prove the the African troops had not been trained well enogh) Here, Algren walks in front of a solder and orders him to kill him or the soldier would be shot, the nameless man takes his shot, missing Algren, proving that they are not ready. They are sent to battle anyway, the unit getting horribly defeated and Algren is captured by the samurai revolutionaries that cling to the old ways of the bow and blade. Living among them, he learns their language, and embraces their way of life eventually leading the final charge against the imperialist Japanese troops along side Katsumoto, the leader of the revolt.
Nathan Algren never existed. Katsumoto never existed, and the United States had little to no deals with the Japanese in their arms build-up since the US was still in the Reconstruction period after the Civil War. Japan dealt mostly with the British, French and Dutch in weapons deals and training almost 10 years before this movie take place. By 1877, (the year this takes place) Japan already had a strong imperialistic army and navy. The events described in this movie relate to the Satsuma Rebellion, specifically the Battle of Shiroyama, the only full scale battle shown in the movie. Katsumoto’s real life counterpart is Saigō Takamori. Takamori led his rebellion in a western uniform and was aided by modern technology, but was still out-numbered nearly 10 to 1. He did not solely rely on the old ways as depicted in this movie. [1]
The switch from European characters to American ones is obvious; America wants to watch a movie about Americans, or anything violent. If the movie was about the French, not many people would want to watch it, because Americans can not relate as well with the French, and the movie would be filled with outragous accents. So by American standards, swords plus a big American star equals a fairly successful movie.
The actual point of the movie is not the violence or the “historical content,” it was about Bushido, the honor code of the samurai. Characters go as far as to say that we, Americans, are really the barbarians because we have no honor or sense. To get the most out of the concept of bushido, the movie is given in the point of view of the rogue samurai as opposed to the Japanese war machine. By tricking American audiences into seeing a violent movie, they were cultured in some Japanese beliefs. With the heavy focus on Japanese culture, the profits from Japan were higher than those in the US [2] because they didn’t need to be tricked into seeing this movie.
Despite being a moderately good movie in my opinion, it is not the most accurate movie to watch to find out historical events. But if every movie followed historical accounts to the letter, we would only get clones of Gods and Generals.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satsuma_Rebellion
[2] http://www.countingdown.com/movies/567538/news?item_id=3367385
April 26th, 2007 at 8:16 am
Great post! When this movie came out, I heard that it was good and it got good reviews. The first time I saw this movie awhile back, I understood the gist of the movie and not the accent or the difference between the Americans and the French. I think. Overall, I think this post was very thoroughly thought out and is very helpful for the people that haven’t seen this movie and wants to see it. What I like about this post is when the author includes “The actual point of the movie is not the violence or the “historical content,” it was about Bushido, the honor code of the samurai”. I totally agree with the author because in the end, I remember that when they were fighting, one side was using guns or arrows, while the other side was using the samurai. This clearly shows that certain things cannot be forgotten. What I didn’t like about this post is the fact that the post author kept including titles of other movies. This movie review is clearly based on one certain movie and not other movies. Also, the fact that you have to kill someone to be “ready” to fight.