The Samurai and the Prisoner

In a sense, this is Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Throne of Blood,” one of the other Kurosawa’s unequivocal masterpieces, and it earns that comparison in every way.

Kurosawa’s well-timed camera moves cut like daggers. What emerges is a samurai picture that feels simultaneously classical and modern, austere and capacious, familiar and surprising.

While not his finest film of his career (or even this year, that would be Chime), Kurosawa continues to prove himself as a vital contemporary master of the craft that explores the essential fabric of his past and present in order to understand the future that is coming.

Although the film is a somber examination of violence, it can also be dryly funny in its depiction of what Murashige must endure.

In each mesmerizing move of the camera or precisely-framed shot, he draws us in closer and closer until we can practically feel the grass under our feet while he simultaneously keeps his sharp eye on the bigger picture.

Much as its main character tries to untangle seemingly impossible conundrums, viewers of The Samurai and the Prisoner will find themselves leaning in and working hard to discern the film’s intriguing details. It’s not a task for those who look to cinema as an escape, requiring aggressive attention from its audience, as all worthwhile art should.

Tedious in its plotting but rich in its temporal frictions, this ultra-faithful adaptation of Honobu Yonezawa’s 2021 novel embraces the time-honored traditions of its form with an eye toward subverting them by the end, an approach that proves apt — if not always satisfying — in the context of a story about a samurai who’s struggling to determine if he should do the same.