Harakiri (Seppuku, Masaki Kobayashi, 1962, Japan)

A ronin samurai arrives at a nobleman’s compound expalins his situation, poverty and desperation and requests permission to take his life in the samurai way on the noble’s land. After trying to persuade him not to and telling him the tragic story of another samurai who made the same request and due to suspicions that he’s only trying to get pity and money, they finally accept his request. Whilst the ceremony is is being prepared the ronin starts to tell his story and nobleman and his cohorts begin to suspect that not all is as seen.

The narrative is slow and relies heavily on repeating motifs, but by that builds tension and suspense and is never boring or long-winded. The theme of Harakiri is hypocricy. It is a searing attack on the class system and lack of social compassion, using the past to examine the present. Kobayashi has only recently been rediscovered in the west after making truly excellent and award-winning films, such as Samurai Rebellion and Kwaidan. To add on the highly underrated and outstanding Tatsyua Nakadai plays the main role.

Harakiri (and most of Kobayashi’s work) is a thoroughly minimalistic work, it uses repetition and few, limited sets and movements and the music is used sparingly etc. but all it’s aspects are used purposefully and thus have a clearer and stronger meaning than in most other films. The editing creates clear, sharp contrasts between periods of time and the camera movements are amazing and the speciality of Kobayashi.