What’s So Great About YOJIMBO?
There are probably tons of essays one can find about Yojimbo, Kurosawa’s masterpiece which has been remade and adapted so many times in so many ways and in so many languages. Among all the other things, there is one thing that caught my eye more than anything else when I watched Yojimbo. And even after all these years, when a topic about that movie comes up, I talk about that same thing. To me the most fascinating thing about Yojimbo is the Spatial Awareness the film creates in me and its audience.
Architecture perhaps is often an aspect that is sometimes most overlooked in movies. An important reason for this is the heritage of movies. Movies traditionally were studio based. Sets were constructed. In the early days of movies, anything that was not shot or filmed in studio was either a documentary or piece of news. Suppose a movie has three scenes – one in living area, one in bedroom and let’s says one in washroom, the sets would be built only for these three scenes, there was no need to build a complete house in a studio due to financial and time constraints. Another reason for sets to be built inside the studio was the options sets gave in terms of cinematography and blocking or camera angles in certain scenes of dialogues of character introspection. Also, any of you who have tried to use sun as for their lighting know how hard it is to master natural lighting is. Not only shooting in sun is painstaking, but also a game of patience, as if you do not get the desired scene, you may sometimes have to wait for the next day. Unpredictable, to say the least it is to shoot in sun, and therefore it becomes extremely difficult for most Hollywood movies to provide its audience a sense of spatial awareness, especially back in those days.
East, in terms of funding for cinema, I feel, was relatively poor and that allowed them to exploit their creativity more. Necessity is the mother of invention. Two of the directors who exploited natural light in that era of late 50s and 60s were Kurosawa and Satyajit Ray, but the pioneer to me in spatial awareness was Kurosawa and Yojimbo.
Yojimbo is a story that deals with the morally ambiguous character without either history or name. It perhaps was more of a story of tug-of-war of a samurai ronin being pulled in one direction and then another and how he baits two sides of the village against each other. While watching the movie you will realize that within fifteen-twenty minutes of watching the movie, you know the map of the village precisely. In every direction, the protagonist, Sanjuro moves, you know that if you were walking that village road, what will be to your right and what will be your left. How long is the distance from one camp of villagers to another on the far side of the village? There are certain things Kurosawa does deliberately and boldly. There are approximately five clear scenes of Sanjuro pacing up and down the village from one end to another. These scenes somehow never seem boring, because perhaps the village is not too big and thus scenes are effectively shorter. There is clarity built through character interactions about where which shop is, where is the coroner’s shop, where is the police constable’s office and such. I’m not sure what were the motivations of Kurosawa were to give the audience the sense of spatial awareness or it was mere accident or perhaps he wanted to show that tussle between the two village camps literally on the screen and thus it was pre-meditative to give that sense of mapping of the village and where these two camps were based.
If you still feel what I am saying is not that great a feat, try watching the most known remake of Yojimbo – A Fistful of Dollars. And watch both these movies one after another. Even with all the brilliance of Sergio Leone, you will never get the understanding of Spatial Awareness with as much clarity as there is in Yojimbo. Why is that? I’m guilty of watching A Fistful of Dollars before Yojimbo. And I like both films for different reasons. But would it mean that the impact of Yojimbo may have been dimmed if the audience doesn’t experience that spatial awareness? I feel yes, to an extent Yojimbo will not be that enjoyable if we do not travel in the village with Sanjuro from one camp to another camp of villagers.
The traces of spatial awareness can be seen today also, most notably and recently in Parasite, where the house of the rich family is very much a character of its own. You still want to know how difficult that is to do in film? In Joker, almost an hour of film is inside Arthur’s flat. Can you tell me where which room is, and where is kitchen with that brilliant refrigerator scene? Therefore, Yojimbo, pioneered back then what is yet to become mainstream even now. To the credit, the cinematography and editing of Yojimbo has equal hand in allowing the audience to feel that special awareness. Despite all the sets and extensive choreography of action sequences, it is absolutely impossible for us to know the village of Yojimbo if not for the camerawork of Miyagawa. A little trivia is that Kurosawa edited Yojimbo, so that combination works in the favour as well, where the director’s vision, or perhaps how director sees the village, we too are able to see.
Why spatial awareness is necessary in films? I believe that since the audience anyways has approximately 90 mins or so with the character, the prime reason that brings them closer to the character is watching the character and his body language interact with space around him. If the audience becomes instinctively aware with what is where spatially around the characters, it somehow makes them feel at home and more susceptible to accept the behaviour of the characters. Not necessarily every story requires this idea of spatial awareness to be inculcated, but in case of character studies, I feel it truly important to build that spatial awareness to tell a sub-textual story without dialogue but visuals.
