The Bad Sleep Well

Every so often, I'll mention that a film's subtitles are conspicuously bad. Sometimes, the movie is bad to start with (Immortal Enemy), but it's often the case where bad subtitles are just annoying. Now, the first time I saw The Bad Sleep Well, it was a downloaded copy with awful babelfished subtitles. The movie was clearly good, but the serious tone was undermined by lines like "YOU JUMP DOWN AND DIE!" Now, having watched the classy, well done subtitles on the Criterion release - legitimately, might I add - I can honestly observe the difference a proper translation makes, and also why if a film was good, not even the worst translation in the world can hold it back.

The story was still clear, even if the details were hard to parse. Toshiro Mifune is Nishi, a secretary and son-in-law to powerful guy Iwabuchi (Masayuki Mori), vice president of the Public corporation, which has something to do with Japanese building contracts. Iwabuchi is corrupt, and powerful enough to get people to kill themselves (an element uniquely Japanese), but he made the mistake of suiciding the wrong man. As a result, Nishi's out for revenge, in a plot that's quite complicated and rewarding in equal measure, with a shocking twist ending.

That story brought me back again, for the second time, even as bad as the translation was, but I appreciated that well written dialog made things a lot clearer. It took away the constant distraction and put the focus squarely on the picture, which is great, because it's a good one. The dueling themes of corruption and loyalty play out in frequently compelling ways. The scheme isn't necessarily complicated, but it also is intricately woven in with the personal relationships between characters. Corruption is a theme, but what corruption does to people is the important part of that theme, and the focus is always on the people rather than the scheme itself.

I'm sure I've mentioned before that Akira Kurosawa makes films like a painter, and this film is no different. Hell, this is the movie that gave me that realization in the first place. Just in the way shots are framed and actors positioned can tell the story of the scene, and sometimes it does more than the necessary exposition in establishing character.

It does have a couple problems. There's a lot of exposition, which can get tiresome as it's not always strictly necessary - sometimes things are explained a bit too much for no clear reason. Kô Nishimura's turn as Shirai requires him to react in shock, which at times seems to border on the ridiculous overacting that sometimes plagues silent films. Still, that's just me picking nits, because that's what I do.

Everyone thinks of samurai epics when they think of Kurosawa, possibly because he was very good at them. However, with this, he proves just as adept with a modern setting and characters. They reach into the core problems of Japanese society - especially of the era it was made - perhaps better than the old samurai, possibly because they're more easily identifiable. The corporate shenanigans are something still relevant 50 years after the fact, and it's one of those films that will always be just a little relevant overall.

Yojimbo

If there's one foreign director pretty much everyone has heard of, it's Akira Kurosawa. There's nothing wrong with that, he's a very good director. What I like about him is that he's clearly got the eye of a painter, since his images are meticulously framed and constructed. A still from a Kurosawa film can often get the essence of the scene down, and he uses the frame efficiently and creatively. However, I suspect that he's popular not because he can frame a shot, but because he's the most western of Japanese filmmakers. So, let's look at a western he made, Yojimbo.

Ignore all the samurai and swords, this is a western. The story also follows a grand western tradition, with a man (Toshiro Mifune) coming into a shockingly dusty crime ridden town, walking around calmly and in a vaguely threatening yet cool manner, and then manipulating everyone for fun and profit. Somewhere Clint Eastwood was taking notes - especially since this was later remade as Fistful of Dollars (consider that, the most American of genres being tackled by an Italian (Sergio Leone) remaking a film from Japan.)

It's actually quite odd to see samurai in the movie, since visually it owes a massive debt to John Ford. The sets, in spite of some local flavor, would not look out of place if John Wayne was walking around them. The huge dusty main street and the various actions that take place on it seem made for a gun duel. Yes, the main rivalry in town involves silk, but there's still liquor and prostitutes, as tends to show up in these kinds of things. The overall look and feel of the film makes it seem to take place in an alternate history, where the Japanese colonized America yet did pretty much the same things that the Europeans did.

But, being Kurosawa, he has managed to make a damn good western. The plot is interesting, as Mifune - who never reveals his name, instead doing the old cinema cliche of naming himself after objects he sees (a field, in this case) - quietly manipulates both sides in a rivalry to get them to do what he wants. The plot twists in interesting ways, though it does rely on the criminals being profoundly stupid and gullible. Since they're small time in a small frontier Japanese village, it's believable that they're quite thick, so that's not a fault.

The thing with Kurosawa, and why he's influenced so many different directors (in strange ways, since here's where George Lucas' obsession with horizontal wipes comes from), is that he's different enough to be eye catching and unique, without being foreign enough to be off putting. You can see familiar themes in his work, and he likes using stuff like Shakespeare as a starting point so the stories often feel accessible. However, he's such a master of his frame that you can't help not only paying attention, but having the distinct urge to rip him off.