《最后的武士》英文观后感,要谈论中西方文化差异的英文字数1200左右

《最后的武士》英文观后感,要谈论中西方文化差异的英文字数1200左右
《最后的武士》英文观后感,要谈论中西方文化差异的
英文字数1200左右

《最后的武士》英文观后感,要谈论中西方文化差异的英文字数1200左右
The Last Samurai,like most other epic of kind,Master and Commander,is a big,old-fashioned romance about honor and warfare and duty—with a healthy dose of Zen.Tom Cruise plays Captain Nathan Algren,a Civil War hero whose subsequent participation in the military campaigns against the Indians has left him racked with nightmares and remorse.An alcoholic shill for the Winchester rifle company,he is brought to Japan by a former commanding officer he despises,Colonel Bagley (Tony Goldwyn),at the behest of advisers to the weak-willed emperor.After 200 years of self-imposed isolation,Japan is ready to open up to the West (and its profitable trade agreements and firearms).Algren is hired to train a conscript army to suppress the samurai,whose fealty to the emperor threatens the “modernization.” Once again,he finds himself having to wipe out tribal rebels,only this time he comes to realize his spiritual affinity with them.Captured by the forces of the legendary Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe,whose hawklike presence is more than a match for Cruise),he adopts the Bushido code—the way of the warrior—and ends up fighting on the side of the samurai.
Algren is discovering within himself his finest possibilities after a long bout of self-loathing.He shapes up,stops drinking,becomes a master swordsman,and receives Yoda-like wisdom from Katsumoto.(Sample dialogue:“Let the strength of the samurai be with you always.”) Tom Cruise has never demonstrated remarkable emotional depth—he’s so ferociouslypresent as a performer that even his reflective moments can seem showy.It is to his credit here that he often succeeds in giving Algren an inner life that is not simply a scaled-down version of his outer one.We don’t register Algren’s need for redemption as simply a plot device.He looks genuinely stricken by his past—so much so that it wasn’t really necessary for the director,Edward Zwick,to periodically insert flashbacks to Algren’s Indian horrors.Zwick,who also directed the powerfully intelligent Civil War drama Glory,is better when he’s working without a highlighter.He stages a couple of battle sequences—especially the climactic one,in which Katsumoto’s warriors,with their swords and bows and arrows,stand hopelessly outnumbered by the emperor’s soldiers,with their rifles and Gatling guns—that have a Shakespearean vigor.Zwick’s model for these war scenes is clearly such Kurosawa movies as Seven Samurai and his Macbeth adaptation,Throne of Blood,and the action is good enough that we don’t chortle at the comparison.With his co-screenwriters,John Logan and Marshall Herskovitz,Zwick’s longtime collaborator,he keeps us continually aware that,win or lose,the samurai now belong to an era that is quickly,tragically fading.
But in attempting to fully render the tragedy,the filmmakers indulge in some rather frayed dramatic conventions.To provide a contrast to the grand optimism that supposedly preceded it,Reconstruction America is depicted as a time of disillusion and self-aggrandizement—which pretty much sums up any American era.The encroachment of Western values into Japan is seen as all bad; its purveyors are mercenaries and weaklings.Compared with the soulful Katsumoto and his other warriors,the sniveling teen emperor Meiji (Shichinosuke Nakamura),his businessman adviser Omura (Masato Harada),and Colonel Bagley are all one-dimensional.Algren is heard saying that there is much about the Japanese he will never understand,and yet what we are presented with is an explicable enigma:The warrior code is a rigorous philosophy of life,and its adherents are depicted as philosopher-kings.There’s a sentimentalism at work here that could fit right into the counterculture seventies—it’s hippie Zen.But surely what must have unsettled principled warriors like Katsumoto and Algren is the recognition that,at bottom,they possessed a dark attraction for blood.We don’t really see this,perhaps because Zwick imagines himself as a samurai,too.He exalts the nobility of these men—and of the entire samurai clan—at the expense of a more uncomfortable psychological reality.These men may fight like beasts,but the beast within remains tethered.
The film’s reverence extends even to the domestic scenes.When Algren is first captured and brought to a remote village that resembles an embattled Shangri-la,he is tended to by Katsumoto’s beautiful,sad-eyed sister,Taka (Koyuki),whose husband the American has just killed in battle.She must keep her temper,but how believable is it that her young sons would express no rage?The Last Samurai is an idyll in which the savageries of existence are transcended by spiritual devotion.That’s a beautiful dream,and it gives the film a deep pleasingness,but the fullness of life and its blackest ambiguities are sacrificed.
应该够了吧?幸好我看过!