Hara-Kiri, Masaki Kobayashi's unflinchingly scathing satire on the Samurai code of honor stars Tatsuya Nakadai as Hanshiro, a ronin (masterless warrior) who arrives at a Lord's palace in order to commit the titular act of ritual suicide. The Lord's counselor and the housekeepers have had way too many such cases, which were ultimately shams to extort money from the lord so that no blood would spill on his courtyard. So naturally, the counselor tries to warn the samurai by recounting the fate of the one who came before him. However, Hanshiro never budges and insists on having the ritual performed, though he has a few demands of his own in order to have it done. And it turns out that Hanshiro has come there with some ulterior motives which would slowly, but surely threaten to strip the whole concept of Samurai honor into what turns out to be nothing more than a web of hypocrisy, prejudice and naked lies. Also told in flashbacks is the tale of what leads Hanshiro to take such an extreme step.
The acting is fantastic throughout, headlined by Nakadai as Hanshiro - the ronin who stares at the face of death with defiance - and RentarÅ Mikuni as Lord Saito, the ruler who appears stern but reasonable at first, only to be gradually reduced to a puerile piece of shit by the ronin's revelations. Also, the film boasts of impeccable use of visual language all along the runtime, starting off in ultra-wide angles and with smooth dolly movements, and subtly constricting the field of view from there by means of close-ups and zooms which only gradually increase in number, culminating in utter chaos at the end. And yes, the storytelling is brutal and unforgiving when it comes to depicting poverty and hypocrisy.
Criterion hits a home run with the video transfer of its Blu-ray release, in that it does full justice to the intentions of the director and the cinematographer. This is an absolutely fantastic B&W presentation devoid of any artifacts and rich in grain. The LPCM Mono track is robust and clean - maybe the best mono track I've heard till date. The release is a bit light on extras by Criterion standards, but that's okay. There's also a booklet with essays on the film as well as the Blu-ray release credits.
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