Most of my serious-samurai-movie-watching experience up to this point has been Kurosawa, but if the rest of Kobayashi’s stuff is as good as this, I need to broaden my horizons a bit. The set-up is elegantly simple: a ronin shows up at the doorstep of a wealthy samurai clan house requesting the privilege of ending his life of poverty and disgrace by committing suicide in the courtyard. Suspecting that the guy is a beggar just looking for a handout, they attempt to force him to go through with it. From there it’s hard to say much without spoiling the story, so suffice it to say that things don’t go at all the way the landowner planned. This ends up being an anti-samurai samurai movie, employing the genre’s conventions to criticize authoritarianism and dishonest dedication to duty. Impressive. Buy the disc
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