A confounding and uneven samurai saga still manages to pack an emotional punch while looking good…
Iwane (Tori Matsuzaka), Shinnosuke (Yosuke Sugino) and Kinpei (Tasuku Emoto) are all sparring partners with the same master and dojo. Close since childhood, the three already regard each other as brothers, but are all set to be brothers in the truest sense since Kinpei’s younger sister Nao (Kyoko Yoshine) is engaged to her love Iwane. But as Iwane is soon assigned to Edo, he makes a promise to her to return for marriage. Meanwhile, Kimpei and Nao’s older sister Mai (Kanako Miyashita) is already married to Shinnosuke. Besides intermarrying, also upon completing their training Iwane is set to work his domain’s finance department, Kinpei in their castle, and Shinnosuke will be head of the whole clan to become one big, happy, prominent, illustrious samurai family and all live happily ever after.
Okay, got all of that? It would probably take a little while with the rather fast pace in which they introduce the characters, but the opening section is so leisurely in mood that it gives about enough time to get acquainted. How leisurely? From the very first shot, it lays out the initial atmosphere from the POV of a cat (showing it cutely startled at the vibrations of the three boys in friendly competition at kendo training) to frivolous TV-style background music. Things get even breezier from there as the young men are going off to their own and each other’s families with lighthearted banter and an almost soapily romantic centrepiece scene on Iwane and Nao.
Many classic and hardcore samurai film fans — if they were raised on the rugged heroism of Kurosawa or Inagaki, or the darker even more testosterone-fueled films of Gosha or Okamoto afterwards — could well be left aghast at the very sight and sound of it all. And even those who came up off the gentler jidaigeki of the 2000s mitigated by prevalent romantic or family themes as symbolized by Yoji Yamada’s Samurai Trilogy (which this is more or less following in the footsteps of) could still find rather excessive sentimentality here. More than once it’s more stylistically matching emotionally outpouring Korean TV dramas than traditional jidaigeki, with soft piano music to hard sorrow. Still, it usually follows that style quite well, for those whom it won’t disrupt the vibe of a chanbara drama for too much. But the even bigger concern is for the poor viewers who’d actually be fully delighted and warmed up to the romance, as not that far into the film it makes a flabbergastingly sudden and stark shift in mood and theme from comedy, male bonding and romance to tragedy, violence and gloom.
In fact, ISOS so dramatically and shockingly destroys almost everything it set up in about the first 30 minutes that one is left wondering what on earth they could still do with the remaining hour and a half. While thankfully the film provides a decent answer, with an almost completely different episode even with an almost completely different cast (aside from occasional thoughts and rumination on the first part), it once again marks a very different prevailing mood and new plot heavily touching on the politics and economics of the Edo Period and machinations around them. This time, Iwane gets caught up in a feud between money exchangers upon the government (who have their own designs) changing monetary policy: the pro-silver Yoshizo’s Imazuya shop (who hires Iwane as bodyguard) versus the anti-silver Urakusai’s (Akira Emoto) Awaya exchange, who has a few rustic ronin led by Togoro in his corner.
It’s not nearly as boring or baffling as it all sounds, as it stills draws on scheming, sword fighting, prostitutes etc. But it is still yet another hell of a thematic and stylistic jolt from the light bonding, delicate romance and swift violence defining other parts of the film — though most of those things still occasionally pop up in the other’s territory so to speak. But at the end of the day the opening section of ISOS dominates the narrative significance and impact to the point it can’t really be considered a prologue but doesn’t mesh smoothly enough with the rest of the film to be considered just another part of it either, and that’s but the most conspicuous facet of a more general issue with tonal imbalance.
But if Iwane has any one true and convincing unifying factor (ironically more than the film’s actual protagonist and namesake as he undergoes as significant of changes as anything else) it’s the lush period atmosphere — not just in the clothing, buildings and sets but even the frequently thoughtful use of nature. So whether the snow is falling around warriors during a moonlit duel (complimented by the impressively graceful brutality of the swordplay) or the flowers are glimmering amid the passionate lovers, Iwane pushes nearly all the right buttons even if somewhat manipulatively or out of sequence sometimes.
In terms of performances, most are above average, with Yoshine being the standout among the major roles and special mention to Matsuzaka just for managing to keep it together with all that the film asks of him. The main cast is uniformly (and successfully) made to look attractive, hip and charismatic over concern of looking historically authentic (not that that’s fully disregarded), with some distinctly modern speech and mannerisms like females widening their eyes while exclaiming “eh!?” [え!?].
Among curiosities, the elderly Emoto does a bizarrely (and for some, perhaps uncomfortably) stereotypical turn in appearance and behavior as a shady money exchanger — basically coming off as Japanese Shylock (in an older cruder rendition), which in a way is appropriate enough when noting some similarity between that segment of the plot and The Merchant of Venice.
A marked improvement over the director’s pleasant but far too leisurely Samurai Hustle series, Iwane could’ve been one of the very few great samurai films of the 21st century so far. It looks good with a nice cast. It has tense and stirring action. It has an elegant romance. Little here is actually handled badly on its own terms and the film has some things really going for it. But Iwane gives a strong impression that it could’ve and should’ve been two (or even three) different films; or if it was to be one film that it focused more smoothly to maintain a prevailing mood. Instead, it leaves more of a feeling of watching three episodes of a good TV series than a genuine epic, leaving one wishing that the particularly involving and moving early and closing parts lasted longer than they did. All in all, you could say Iwane has at least a little of something for everyone — and at least a little of something to fluster everyone.
“Money makes this [new] world go round, not swords or spears.”
Side note
This film is actually based off of a series of novels from Yasuhide Saeki that was apparently never published in English and stretches across dozens of volumes spanning over a decade. While I know nothing of them, I strongly suspect that at least partially explains Iwane’s awkward condensation into one movie.