Notable Cast: Tatsuya Nakadai, Yoshio Harada, Keiko
Kishi, Ayumi Ishida, Makoto Fujita, Sonny Chiba, Isao Natsuyagi, Kayo Matsuo,
Ai Kanzaki, Tatsuo Umemiya, Hajime Hana, Tetsuro Tamba, Koji Takusho
It’s a simple shot, towards the end of Hideo Gosha’s
late-70s chanbara epic Hunter in the Dark, that really encapsulates the
director's artistry and his take on various genres. A young woman sits leaning
over a gravely injured lover. Not to spoil too much about the scene, but it’s a
classic sequence where she begs him to get up, not to die, and he responds in
the well-trodden “go, you need to go” kind of sacrificial statements.
Truthfully, it’s not the best-written scene; it’s carried by two incredibly
strong performances, but then Gosha does what Gosha does. He shoots it while
slowly pulling the camera back, encircling the two characters in their square
of light as the blackness around them grows, slowly shrinking the scene as it
plays out until it's barely a fifth of the screen. By the end of it, it’s two
characters, bared to the truth, both in denial about their respective places,
and they are completely boxed in by the blackness around them.
I cried. Full on, tears down the face, cried.