The Hidden Fortress: majestic epic tale of honour, loyalty and friendships across social barriers

Akira Kurosawa, “The Hidden Fortress” (1958)

Inspiration for George Lucas’ “Star Wars: A New Hope”, the 1978 space-fantasy flick that spawned an industry, this unusual historical drama road movie tells an epic tale of honour, loyalty and friendships forming across social barriers from the point of view of two lowly peasants, Tahei (Minoru Chiaki) and Matashichi (Kamatari Fujiwara). Originally they had hoped to fight on the side of the Yamana clan but they arrived too late at the battlefield and were forced to bury the dead soldiers. After a few other mishaps, they are taken prisoner again by the Yamanas and forced to dig for the rival clan Akizuki’s gold in a castle. The prisoners inside rebel and the two peasants escape. They find some gold marked with the Azkizuki clan’s emblem in a river and this leads them to General Rokurota (Toshiro Mifune) who is protecting Princess Yumi (Misa Uehara) from the Yamanas. The unlikely quartet form a plan to escape through Yamana territory to a third clan’s territory. Their adventures are many and varied: they acquire a fifth companion, a farmer’s daughter (Toshiko Higuchi), along the way; Rokurota sees off a number of soldiers and fights a duel with an old foe: and the groups nearly loses all its gold, hidden in firewood, when compelled to participate in a village fire festival ritual to hide from the pursuing Yamanas.

Throughout their many travails the peasants are tempted by their greed to make off with all the gold and/or to report Princess Yumi’s movements to her mortal enemies. The haughty tomboy Princess Yumi learns how the poor and lowly subjects of her realm live and saves the farmer’s daughter once or twice. Rokurota spares his foe after defeating him in the duel and the foe repays him in gratitude. Subtle and not-so-subtle lessons about friendship, honour, reciprocity and the importance of teamwork and collective survival over the traditional social hierarchy are learnt here.

The film has a grand epic scale which sometimes means that some scenes are extended well beyond the point they make: the duelling between Rokurota and his old enemy, in which they stampede all over the battle-ground and nearly take down the entire army camp with them, seems far too prolonged, and other scenes in the film also drag on far too long. On the other hand, the fire festival celebration is joyous and raucous and would do many Hollywood musicals of the 1920s – 1950s proud. The cinematography often emphasises the vast richness of the land over and against which the action takes place: grasslands are rippling in the breeze, stony landscapes are extremely harsh and unforgiving on the humans who labour in them, oases of thick undergrowth and bubbling springs really are as refreshing as you can imagine. The pity about making this film in Japan in the late 1950s was that colour filming had only just arrived in the country and Kurosawa probably had to make a difficult decision about making the film in colour and reducing the majestic scale that he wouldn’t to work on, or keeping the style, sticking to the budget but filming in black-and-white.

Acting is quite good though the actors play very stereotyped characters and there really is not any obvious character development apart from what can be inferred from characters’ speech and actions. Tahei and Matashichi more or less remain cowering, greedy wastrels until near the very end. Princess Yumi’s headstrong nature doesn’t serve her much until one of the film’s climaxes.

Plot is quite slow to develop – it doesn’t get going until about halfway through the film – and once it does, it’s basically a string of near-comedy skits in which the characters’ lives are complicated by unexpected incidents that also test their mettle. There’s a mix of slapstick, serious action, plenty of soapie-style drama, situation comedy and, with Toshiro Mifune at the helm, plenty of macho-man heroic derring-do. The historical setting – some time during Japan’s Spring and Autumn warring states period from the 15th to 16th centuries – provides a war-time context in which the old social values are breaking down and new ones based on genuine human feeling and equality of all humans are being born.

The style of the film, the adventure road movie plot that teaches characters more about themselves than they realise, the landscapes and the majestic sweep of the filming ensure that “The Hidden Fortress” remains a true family-oriented classic in spite of its length and the sometimes silly or convoluted story-telling.

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