Monday, December 15, 2014

Unforgiven - Sunday 21st December 5pm

Our film this week is ‘Yurusarezaru mono (Unforgiven)’. Many of the Westerns of the Clint Eastwood era were based on Samurai films from Japan; this one is the Samurai film from Japan based on the Clint Eastwood western ‘Unforgiven’. For those of you who loved the original, this will be enough to bring you along to see what the Japanese have done with it (the plot is the same, the politics are Japanese, the widescreen vistas are superb). For those of you who didn’t like it (why not?!), maybe Charlotte O’Sullivan (This is London) can convince you – ‘Clint Eastwood's 1992 western is adored by just about every critic in the world. Except me. Weirdly, I found Sang-il Lee's reverent remake gripping’.

If even that doesn't get your interest up, maybe Tom Huddleston (Time Out) can: ‘the plot is just a framework on which director Lee Sang-il and his scriptwriters hang many fascinating ideas: about the country's treatment of its indigenous Ainu people, about the shift from feudalism to ‘freedom’, and of course – as with any great western – about the rules and ramifications of violence. Unexpectedly brilliant’. Interested yet? We do hope so!