Masaki Kobayashi’s HARAKIRI has less in common with Akira Kurosawa’s period adventure films than it does with the modernist films of the 60s like SALVATORE GIULIANO, IL CONFORMISTA or even John Ford’s THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE. This film is an examination and a critical analysis of both the Samurai ethos and the cold feudal world that seeks to replace the prior order.

Tatsuya Nakadai is one of Japan’s greatest actors and he gives a powerhouse performance as Hanshiro Tsugumo who comes to the house of Lord Iyi asking to commit seppuku but as the film advances and a series of intricate flashbacks make clear there’s more to his mind than ritual self-destruction and as the film climaxes it also raises doubts into his beliefs and his ideas and also his plan which despite being followed according to his ideas bring out results which can be called ambiguous.

HARAKIRI is above all a visual feast, with the powerful use of black and white scope creating a formal beauty that at times looks like Picasso in it’s use of rectangles and frontal arrangements and at others looks like a stylized tapestry.