Now before you all shoot me, just hold on, alright?
It was a good story, Mifune was top notch as always, the princess was great, the scenery, the set, etc., was all fantastic.
I just can't stand the two bumbling idiots. I absolutely hate characters like that with a passion. Seeing as how I hated them so much, I guess that's proof of great acting and great writing.
Damn good movie, just not for me.
I heard it somewhere (I forgot where), but it was said that both Tahei and Matakishi were two of the most un-Hollywood type of characters ever, and I do think it's all interesting.
Yes, both Tahei and Matakishi are scoundrels to the highest levels, yet it is the circumstances surrounding them that have made them so. They were farmers, which was tough enough in those days, so they quit and thought they'd make their fortunes in war and eventually end up on the losing side and put into forced labor. Then escape, then being captured again and then another escape. In their world for struggle and survival, it's each man for himself. In an awkward way, you feel pity for them but at the same time cannot stand them, which I would definitely call very un-Hollywood.
I also have to admit "The Hidden Fortress" is the 'worst' (relatively spoken) Kurosawa movie I've seen. I loved Ikiru, Rashomon, Seven Samurai, High and Low, Drunken Angel, etc. because of the great character studying and the mostly simple yet touching story. The plot of THF though wasn't very interesting, the pacing was sometimes too slow and the two farmers often annoyed me as well (ironically, Kurosawa's non-humouristic films are much funnier than this comedy). Only Mifune is splendid as always!
But maybe I have to watch it again a second time.
I just can't stand the two bumbling idiots. I absolutely hate characters like that with a passion.
Yeah, me too! I don't mind their lack of morals at all. But their slapstick really bugs me.
It's good to be bad; but it's bad to be incompetent.
Seeing as how I hated them so much, I guess that's proof of great acting and great writing.
I guess it's an interesting experiment to make these 2 characters so central to the plot. They're very Shakespearean (in the sense that Shakespeare likes to treat his working class characters as comedic fools). But in Shakespeare these guys would have had no more than a scene (maybe 2) to help the Maguffin.
I think George Lucas had the right idea when he made R2-D2 a sympathetic character (redeeming the worst excesses of C3PO).
Wow, I guess I'm alone on this one then. I think it's perhaps I went into the movie looking at them not so much as scraggly peasants, or greedy scoundrels, but as the 'templates' for C-3PO and R2-D2, thus their immorality became more like their antics.
Also it was amusing to see the situations they would get themselves into that would normally have led them to be caught or killed, and in the end it turned out for the best (i.e. the fire festival).
It's funny because now that I think of it, these types of characters in other movies usually rub me the wrong way as well, but in this movie I couldn't but help see them as fun if sympathetic characters who are just looking to be happy.
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