A Ghostlike Passerby (Shweta)

The last fight scene begins with a close up of Gonji's dangling feet (who may be presumed dead). In the background, Sanjuro's ghostlike form appears and is dramatized by the emerging fog. We then see Unosuke's gang of around 12 members and Sanjuro alone approach one another. We begin to get invested in this fight scene. Why is there beauty here and what does combat represent? 

Like other action films, Yojimbo sets up a fight between the morally right people and their obnoxious opposites. We already side by Gonji and Sanjuro not only because we want justice to prevail but because we grow to hate the gamblers and the exaggerated ugliness in their characters. In this combat, Sanjuro fights to preserve his morality, and in contrast, Unosuke reveals his lack of honor and morals. 

Unosuke is powerless against Sanjuro without his pistol and with Gonji as bait, he probably aims to negotiate. Sanjuro has his hands hidden under his kimono while Unosuke makes a display of his pistol to his disadvantage. The fight scene progresses quickly. Everyone is killed in a quick slice of the abdomen. Sanjuro's years of practice and skill in fighting shows us that the two sides are unequal both in their abilities (how they fight) and in their motivations (when and why they fight). In the last scene, because there is no threat to his life, Sanjuro has a way of playing god. He has the ability to make death as gruesome as he wishes it to be and has the choice to not kill Yoichiro. This battle shows us an extension of his morality in his physicality. 

Fighting for what Sanjuro believes in also abstracts the weight of life and death in this movie. In other instances, we see hostages tied with ropes like bait, Yuichiro's mother exclaims, "Why didn't you bite off your tongue and die?" and in addition, we don't feel for the dead. The quick, clean cuts make the fight scenes less intimate and the sword adds an impersonal distance from the victims. We are shown Unosuke suffering but likewise, we do not feel for him. Instead, the ugliness of these characters bleeds out profusely. We see Yuichiro's and Unosuke as people stuck in this town in different ways: the former as one who did not have any choice in the world he is born in, and the latter with an inborn gambling nature and dishonest personality which cannot help exposing itself to its very end. This reminds me of Yuichiro's mother when she implies that gamblers need to detach from honor otherwise they wouldn't be gamblers ("Honor means nothing to gamblers."). 

The fight sequences are beautiful because it intermingles standing for what's right against Sanjuro's own supernatural orchestration of events. Even after Unosuke's death, there is no relief because the man with the gong enters the scene. He continually strikes it with a confrontational expression and movement toward the camera. In the sonorous beating of the gong that we hear throughout the movie, death now resonates in the foreground. Something ominous still stands. The same conflict is echoed in the graveyard scene when Sanjuro steps out of the coffin and Gonji says, "You don't look like one of the living." Sanjuro may have 'fixed' the ongoing problems in the town but not without the death of almost everyone present. He enters and leaves like a ghostlike passerby. Has Sanjuro really changed anything?

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