Japanese cinema mourns the lack of veteran actor Tatsuya Nakadai, who passed away at age 92. The celebrated performer amassed greater than 100 screen credits throughout his seven-decade-long profession.
Nakadai was particularly notable for incessantly collaborating with director Masaki Kobayashi and even led memorable Akira Kurosawa titles reminiscent of Ran, Kagemusha, and High and Low. Having received the Order of Culture, Japan’s highest honor for contributions to arts and science, the actor left behind an infinite catalog, and listed below are those that indubitably immortalize his impact on world cinema.
1. The Human Condition Trilogy (1959-1961)
- IMDb Rating: 8.8/10 (Part III), 8.5/10 (Parts I & II)
- Director: Masaki Kobayashi
- Streaming On: Not Available
Plot: Transforming himself into Kaji, Nakadai delivers what many consider certainly one of the best performances in film history. His pacifist socialist protagonist leads from the front on this nine-and-a-half-hour odyssey that cascades across three movies surrounding a devastating saga. In A Soldier’s Prayer, his character witnesses the final word tests of survival as a Soviet prisoner of war during World War II’s closing days, struggling to keep up his humanity amid unimaginable brutality.
Then again, it’s the third installment, often considered essentially the most melancholic, breathtaking, and deeply disturbing of the three, that answers whether it’s morally justifiable to guage people by stereotypes somewhat than their actions. Three of essentially the most gorgeous-looking black-and-white movies ever made, the trilogy’s epic scope and emotional depth will not be only lifted by Kobayashi’s profound humanist themes, but in addition by Nakadai’s lead portrayal.
2. Seven Samurai (1954)
- IMDb Rating: 8.6/10
- Director: Akira Kurosawa
- Streaming On: Apple TV+, HBO Max
Plot: While Nakadai’s role in Kurosawa’s magnum opus was minimal, his presence as a samurai captured by the bandits early on this groundbreaking epic established his relationship with the celebrated director of Rashomon. The saga follows the titular heroes recruited by desperate farmers to face against the marauding bandits, establishing the template for countless motion movies to follow, be it Hollywood’s The Magnificent Seven or Bollywood’s Sholay.
Seven Samurai is a splendidly crafted, quintessentially scored, incredibly choreographed, well-acted, and beautifully written phenomenon, deservingly adored by audiences worldwide. It transcended excellence by having many layers while daring to maintain shades of gray to preserve human drama. It’s also the only real reason Kurosawa would later forged Nakadai in major leading roles that defined each their careers.
3. Harakiri (1962)
- IMDb Rating: 8.6/10
- Director: Masaki Kobayashi
- Streaming On: The Criterion Channel
Plot: Nakadai delivers what may thoroughly be his best single-film appearance as Hanshiro Tsugumo, an aging ronin who arrives at a feudal lord’s estate requesting an honorable place to commit seppuku, a ritual suicide. Through nested layering and complicated yet meaningful structure to enhance the suspense and build-up with flashbacks, Harakiri spotlights how the samurai’s life became intertwined together with his son-in-law, who previously visited the identical estate and was barbarically forced to commit harakiri with a dull bamboo blade after selling his real sword to support his sick family.
Nakadai’s restrained yet insurmountable performance builds toward an explosive confrontation that exposes the hypocrisy and cruelty underlying the samurai code of honor through the Edo period’s shogunates. The jidaigeki tale is hailed as the best anti-samurai story ever told, difficult Bushido morality and critiquing the feudal system while supplying social commentary on injustice and political corruption. While many position Harakiri superior even to Seven Samurai, it shouldn’t be an overstatement to deem it the best Japanese film outside the filmographies of Akira Kurosawa and Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki.
4. High and Low (1963)
- IMDb Rating: 8.4/10
- Director: Akira Kurosawa
- Streaming On: HBO Max
Plot: On this police procedural thriller that got here out many years ahead of its time, Nakadai embodies Chief Detective Tokura, the methodical investigator leading the seek for a kidnapped child. While fellow Kurosawa collaborator Toshiro Mifune guides us through the movie’s emotional corners as the rich executive Kingo Gondo, Nakadai represents the skilled persistence via his collaborative police work in tracking down the perpetrator. His performance personifies a surrealist versatility, giving the investigation its backbone and driving the Kurosawa thriller’s tension.
Acclaimed for its moral dilemmas, class disparity, and human nature complexities, High and Low actually locate the previous in Nakadai’s authoritative lead that contrasts effectively with Mifune’s emotional pandemonium. The classic’s influence on police procedural cinema is conspicuous, with many fictional detectives struggling to copy Nakadai’s meticulous investigator, who set the genre’s gold standard.
5. Ran (1985)
- IMDb Rating: 8.2/10
- Director: Akira Kurosawa
- Streaming On: Apple TV+, BFI Player Amazon Channel
Plot: In his early 50s, Nakadai played much older in Ran, wearing intense ghost-like makeup to portray Hidetora Ichimonji, a desolate, world-weary warlord in the illusion of Shakespeare’s King Lear. The aging lord divides his kingdom amongst his three sons, unleashing a cascade of betrayal, madness, and warfare across feudal Japan. Nakadai’s haunting mask of a robust man’s despairing descent right into a broken, childlike figure quickly got here to be referred to as certainly one of cinema’s best roles.
Ran features each lyrical and grandiose artistry with exquisite, spare imagery, a hauntingly melancholic rating by Toru Takemitsu, and Nakadai’s understated performance to attach the great parts and form certainly one of the few fully released epics ever made. Ran also had Kurosawa receive his solitary directing Oscar nomination while introducing Western audiences to Nakadai’s extraordinary abilities, the veteran actor actualized through an unbelievably devastating character arc.
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