Life and death from table to casket -- Yojimbo (Lester Fu)

 

    The restaurant owner and the casket maker in Yojimbo can be seen respectively as symbolic representations of life and death. Food is business for the living and casket is business for the dead. If we take a closer look at the protagonist's interactions with these two characters, we can see the entire movie as a dance of life and death.

    The first place the protagonist sets his foot in is the restaurant, it implies that what awaits him here is life. He will live through the end. Yet the casket maker is just next door to the restaurant. The vicinity of these two establishments signifies the vicinity of life and death in this town. The fact that the casket maker has the only profiting business in town also embodies the stronger presence of death. And again the very presence of death is also reflected in the restaurant owner's constant frustration. This is the place where the dance begins.

    The initial interaction between the protagonist and the town smells strongly of death, and the protagonist quickly submerges himself in the gloomy atmosphere. He chopped some arms and took some lives then offered to be a bodyguard. It is interesting how the job of the bodyguard is, again, a combination of life and death -- protecting life through killing. Up to this point, from the restaurant owner's perspective, he is but another ruthless opportunist in the mist of the chaos. This position served the protagonist very well as it hid his true intention and preserved his life for the time being. By leaning towards death and killing, he gets to live on the tip of knives.

    Everything shifted after he saved the gambler and his wife. The restaurant owner begins to smile at him, as he recognizes that the protagonist isn't just another gambler of death, but a defender of life in disguise. At this point in the dance, the protagonist takes the hand of life, yet death soon follows. He was locked up and tortured right after the truth revealed. The town of death cannot allow the existence of an advocate of life. Thus, once again, the protagonist survived under the wings of death. Several times had he concealed himself in a casket-like receptacle and escaped death. It is interesting how both the restaurant owner and the casket maker contributed to his escape from the town. In a way, for a short while, both life and death were on his side. Even though the casket maker ran away before the protagonist was safe, it was him that delivered to the protagonist the news about the restaurant owner being in danger. We see more and more how both the restaurant owner and the casket maker -- the representation of life and death -- are present in the same frame, instead of being separated by a thin wall. In a way, this highlights the simultaneous presence of life and death, instead of one of them hidden in the background. This simultaneous presence reached a climax when the protagonist returned to the town, and the casket maker -- the representation of death -- actually saved the restaurant owner -- the representation of life. 

    From this perspective, we can see the intertwined relationship between life and death in Yojimbo, like Yin and Yang they accompany each other, counteract each other, while mutually propagate each other's existence. After all, the table in the kitchen and the casket under the ground could be made with the wood from the same tree.



Comments

  1. Krishnan VenkateshDecember 28, 2021 at 5:50 PM

    Very interesting. This is partly why the cinematography is so insistent on the textures of wood. Also, at the climax, when Sanjuro gives Unosuke the pistol back and gazes at him perfectly calmly as he shoots it, we have a beautiful demonstration of the warrior's indifference to death. True life isn't worried about dying.

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