Great Bodhisattva Pass [大菩薩峠] AKA The Sword of Doom (1966)"The sword is the soul. Study the soul to know the sword. Evil mind, evil sword."
I love it when a movie comes along - one you know absolutely nothing about, nor have heard of before - and completely knocks your socks off. While I like to think I've seen my fair share of chambara and jidaigeki flicks, I confess I was unaware of
Great Bodhisattva Pass. Now having watched it and subsequently read up on its history, I now know it is something of a well-known legend in samurai cinema and literature. I’m sure others here would’ve most likely seen it already.
Based on one of the longest serial novels in Japan by Kaizan Nakazato (41 volumes encompassing 1,533 chapters and over 5,700,000 million Japanese characters),
Great Bodhisattva Pass is about the seemingly “evil” swordsman Ryunosuke Tsukue, played by Tatsuya Nakadai, and his descent into insanity. The movie starts with Ryunosuke, not yet revealed to the audience, murdering an old Buddhist pilgrim praying for death atop a mountain pass (the titular pass in fact). The scene is horrifying yet visually stunning and sets the tone for the rest of the film.
From here we follow successive key moments in Ryunosuke’s life. The day after the murder of the old man, he is scheduled for a bout at a triannual tournament. His opponent is Bunnojo Utsugi, star pupil of the Kogen Ittō-ryū; the school Ryunosuke was formerly associated with, expelled for ungiven reasons within the confines of the narrative. However, on the evening before the tournament, Utsugi’s fiancé, Hama, calls on Ryunosuke at his residence. She pleads with him to throw the fight, such is Ryunosuke’s reputation with the sword and his infamous, eerie “silent form” style. At first Ryunosuke declines.
Hama, though, continues to beg. If Utsugi loses the bout, he will lose the favour of the Kogen Ittō-ryū and also a tentative position as fencing instructor for the local lord, potentially leaving their family destitute. Ryunosuke is attracted to Hama. He agrees to throw the fight if she will sleep with him. Hama begrudgingly accepts this condition for the sake of her husband-to-be. Come the tournament; it is revealed Utsugi had Hama followed and knows what she did with Ryunosuke. He divorces her and intends to kill Ryunosuke in their match.
We now first witness Ryunosuke Tsukue’s odd fencing style. His “silent form” is adapting a lax guard, slowly lowering his blade, taunting his opponent to strike. Unwavering, he never makes the first move; Ryunosuke always counters his enemy’s attack. In the match, Ryunosuke senses Utsugi’s murderous intent. Just as the bout is declared a draw due to inaction, Bunnojo fouls by stabbing at Tsukue. The attack is countered with a single strike to the head. Ryunosuke kills Bunnojo. This, of course, causes major uproar.
Ryunosuke leaves. On his way home, Hama approaches him, warning that clansmen and pupils of the Kogen Ittō-ryū have set an ambush in retaliation. Ryunosuke seems to bristle as this prospect, ignoring Hama’s pleas of eloping with her. The trap is sprung and in a beautifully choreographed fight (seriously, check out video on Youtube. There are even really cool GIFs via Google Images), Ryunosuke leaves some 12 men dead without breaking a sweat. Now wanted for murder, Tsukue abandons his life and flees with Hama to Edo.
The story moves three years forward in time. Ryunosuke now lives in Edo with Hama and their infant son under the alias Ryutaro Yoshida. He scrapes by serving as a swordsman for the Shinchōgumi (Edo branch or precursor to the Shinsengumi) chiefly as an assassin. I don’t want to spoil things or go into too much detail, but here the film slows down and we get to see a bit of Ryunosuke and Hama’s day-to-day. We also get to see the stories of Matsu; the orphan granddaughter of the old pilgrim from the beginning, Shinchibei; the thief who saved and adopted Matsu, and Hyoma; Bunnojo Utsugi’s younger brother who is training to one day get revenge on Ryunosuke Tsukue.
All throughout, Ryunosuke’s face is a fixed expression of detached observation, glassy eyes suggesting and unknowable disquiet. Tatsuya Nakadai's portrayal of Ryunosuke, along with the exquisite camera work and soundtrack, help instil a sense of dread and foreboding in the viewer, something which continues to build into a fever pitch. It’s then we come to the turning point of the movie.
During a botched assassination, Ryunosuke is witness to another master swordsman. Numerous Shinchōgumi men are cut down effortlessly by Toranosuke Shimada, played by Toshiro Mifune in what is the most perfect casting and ultimately an incredibly bad-arse and glorified cameo. Shimada seems to be something of a foil to Ryunosuke, not only in his fencing style - which is more orthodox and perhaps more iconic in a classical sense within samurai cinema - but in his world view and outlook, clearly pained by having been forced to kill so many to defend himself.
Ryunosuke is so shocked by this display that he is frozen with doubt and uncertainty. Up until now it is apparent he thought he was peerless when it came to the sword. This is the first in a chain of events that serves to unhinge Ryunosuke’s grasp on reality, Shimada’s words echoing within him: “Evil mind, evil sword.”
From here, we get a descent arc. Again, I don’t want to get too generous with the spoilers but the movie culminates into its climax: Ryunosuke’s mind seems to finally snap and we get a bloody eight minute plus fight at the conclusion. The body count is through the roof ridiculous, and I think the final shot is my favourite out of the entire movie.
The movie ends on a cliff-hanger, a freeze-frame. Ryunosuke cutting and cutting, endlessly, wounded and bloodied almost beyond a doubt of his fate. What appears on the surface to be an exercise in nihilism and absurdist violence is in fact an examination of the world and the people in it. Let me expound on that latter point.
Having watched the movie and taking the ending into consideration, the obvious conclusion is that Ryunosuke is an incarnation or embodiment of evil. So long as there is evil in the world, our “anti-hero” will keep on going, killing and killing. Just look at the freeze-frame above. “The end,” the massive kanji reads stamped, Ryunosuke still, caught in mid-swing. This seems to be the common hypothesis I've seen looking at other analyses for this film.
However, I mentioned I've read into the background of the story. Turns out
Great Bodhisattva Pass, directed by Kihachi Okamoto which I should have mentioned sooner, was only the first in an intended trilogy that never came about. In fact,
Great Bodhisattva Pass only covers the first three books in what is a 41 volume series which is itself unfinished, due to the author passing away not having given it an ending.
Turns out though that Ryunosuke survives that impossible fight, which of course he would because “evil is unending” if you want to pursue that train of thought. I don’t know much about the rest of the story of Kaizan Nakazato’s novel, but what I can gather from what little I can find – primarily a translated synopses PDF from some US college course on Japanese literature – Ryunosuke lives on. He eventually switches side to support the Imperial faction, takes another lover who meets an untimely end, ages, loses his vision and goes blind. The story follows other main characters for a few years (Hyoma Utsugi, and a dwarfish spearman apparently, just to name a couple), checks in with Ryunosuke from time to time, who eventually floats out of sight on the roof of a house in a flood as mad as a hatter.
It seems Okamoto’s movie achieves what the novel has left us with anyway. A cliffhanger. A “to be continued” never to be continued. Ryunosuke fighting on, perhaps eternally.
Getting back to my point I brought up though: My read isn't that Ryunosuke is an embodiment of evil or some such, but that he is in fact a mirror, reflecting the world around him back outwardly. Take, for example, his silent form as a microcosm; he never strikes nor acts first, only ever retaliates those who attack him. Even as his work as an assassin, “the victims” always cut at him first. It’s his circumstances, the world after all, that has put him into this line of work. The only truly ambiguous act is the murder of the old man at the start. But the old man was praying for death. The mirror simply gave what was requested. An amoral man; the mirror. Even his treatment of Hama is due to the insinuation that she lusts for him first.
That’s my theory anyway, and I think it’s a stroke of genius how Ryunosuke’s sword style matches up with this process.
Great Bodhisattva Pass is an examination of the bloodthirsty world and people of the time via Ryunosuke as a mirror, reflecting everything around him; he is the world around him.
I highly recommend
Great Bodhisattva Pass. The direction and cinematography are superb and Tatsuya Nakadai is sublime as the main character. I don’t usually do this kind of thing for movies but this one was worth it. Definitely entering my canon of top films.
movieartman wrote:- Sandra should have gotten naked on screen, by god!, Just her in her Bikini was better than some of the series other nude scenes.
