Issue:
. . . at 6:30 pm on Thursday, Sept. 18 for Takashi Koizumi’s first film in five years, A Samurai Chronicle, followed by a Q&A with the writer-director and his star, Koji Yakusho. Based on the Naoki Prize-winning novel by Rin Hamuro, it is a film of autumnal magnificence, both in its stunning scenery and its sublime performances. Set at the end of the Edo period, it is the elegiac story of a samurai’s final three years before he must keep his promise to commit seppuku as punishment for a crime he committed seven years before the tale begins. But it is also a detective story and a love story, with strong messages about fatherhood, community and honor. Koizumi was the longtime assistant to Akira Kurosawa and the director of the award-winning After the Rain (2000) and Best Wishes for Tomorrow (2008), which he cowrote with Roger Pulvers.
(Japan, 2014; 129 minutes; Japanese with English subtitles.)
— Karen Severns
