"Ghost Dog" - directed by Jim Jarmusch

03.16 - Posted by Editor

Japan On My Mind
"Mifune" and "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai"

By NaRhee Ahn   3/16/00   From reading the titles of two recently released art-house films, "Mifune" by Soren Kragh-Jacobsen and "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai" by Jim Jarmusch, you would think they were films about Japan.     You'd be wrong. They're not set in Japan, but in Denmark and the Bronx, respectively. There are no Japanese characters either but Danes, Italian mobsters, and blacks from the ghettos and an unnamed French-speaking African country. It would be easy to be confused walking by a theater marquee seeing these two movies and think, "Hey, are these foreign films or what?" The answer is yes in the case of "Mifune" but not in the way you expect; it is the third installment of the Danish Dogme 95 movement. What "Mifune" and "Ghost Dog" are in actuality is a synchronicity of the Akira Kurosawa Effect on the rest of the world. As the director's death spawned a host of retrospectives in every film-loving country, Japan's most effective cultural ambassador became uppermost in other filmmaker's minds. How much they loved his films "Ran," "Seven Samurai" and "Rashomon" and how the stories, characters and images still linger, branded onto the brain of the world cinema community. And the near-simultaneous demise of Toshiro Mifune, Kurosawa's most memorable muse, only added to the legendary legacy.     It's interesting to note how differently the Effect is used in the two films. In "Mifune" a social-climbing newlywed Kresten (Anders W. Berthelsen) has to leave his cosmopolitan life behind to clean up the aftermath of his father's death and take care of his differently-abled brother Rud (Jesper Asholt) in his hometown, a remote farming village. A former prostitute (Iben Hjejle) tries to do some social climbing herself by joining this dysfunctional family as a housekeeper and eventually Kresten's new love. Hiding their pasts from each other leads to a disastrous upheaval and a sentimental reconciliation.     The title refers to a game that Kresten plays to entertain his brother -- he impersonates Mifune and chases his brother, using a broomstick as a Samurai sword. Director Kragh-Jacobsen claims the character of Kresten is based on Kikuchiyo from "Seven Samurai". They are two lower-class men trying to rise above their station but end up back in the villages defending the way of life they tried so hard to leave behind. It's a tribute to the master and one of his favorite actors of all time. Unfortunately, it isn't much of a tribute. The story is simple in a sitcom-weary romantic comedy way, the characters glossily stock and shallowly two-dimensional, albeit gamely played by the attractive actors. If this weren't a Dogme film there would be nothing exceptional about it to report and it certainly would not have made it to U.S. distribution. The comparison between it and anything that Kurosawa directed is laughable.     In contrast is the more complex, troublesome cross-cultural pastiche of "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai" by an acknowledged auteur of inter-continental storytelling, Jim Jarmusch. It is one more step in the journey that non-Asian filmmakers have taken in co-opting the "cooler" aspects of a foreign civilization to critique their own. Samurai. Geisha. Kung-Fu. Feng-Shui. Somehow these are purer disciplines, less spiritually corrupt than their own systems of belief that were never believed in and hardly tolerated. Combine them with a hip-hop soundtrack and a New York City setting where violence takes on a fairy-tale/ironic horror movie quality and you've got instant cultural fusion.     Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker) lives by the 18th century teachings of Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai ever since his life was saved by a small-time mobster Louie (John Tormey). How he came to choose this lifestyle in the Bronx is never explained. Now he's a contract killer who prefers a katana over a gun, communicates only by carrier pigeon and befriends an ice-cream truck owner and young bookwormish girl. All this while he's eradicating the low-rent crime family his master Louie belongs to because its morals of honor and loyalty have disintegrated to a fractious, unjust struggle for power. The final showdown between Louie and Ghost Dog rather heavily elides the worlds of Samurai/Mafia together in the line "We're from different, ancient tribes… both almost extinct." The written warrior codes of both men are transferred to the only two women in the film, the mob boss's daughter and the "Rashomon"-reading young girl.     Luckily for Jarmusch fans, there are enough signature hilarious verbal exchanges, offbeat characters, atmospheric visuals and stylized set-ups to distract from the incongruity of the main character in his urban environment. There’s also an Akira Kurosawa Effect between "Seven Samurai"/"The Magnificent Seven" and the final scene of "Ghost Dog". If you are the kind of pop-culture savant that enjoys the recycling of international tropes, the parallels and differences of comparative literature in movie iconography and the revisionist clash of medieval Japanese thought and the neo-noir gangster genre then you must go see this movie.     On the other hand if you find the solemn reverencing of all things "spiritually Asian" tiresome and pointless you may be right. But even if you finally wish that Asian American directors would be able to get their shit together and their stories told, and you cringed when you read the title of this film, you should still go and see it. It may be a primer on what truly independent filmmaking looks like in the new millenium.   NaRhee Ahn is a filmmaker living in New York City   Comments Post a comment Name: Email Address: URL: Comments: Remember info?