Japan owes a lot to the samurai warlords who unified the country in the late 16th century, but these ¡°great men¡± of history were really no better than yakuza bosses, willing to betray or behead anyone in their quest for power. Such is the lesson imparted by ¡°Kubi,¡± Takeshi Kitano¡¯s blood-drenched and breathtakingly cynical period epic.
Revisiting one of the most well-trodden eras in Japan¡¯s past, the filmmaker dishes up a savage riposte to the sanitized versions of history presented by NHK¡¯s Sunday night taiga dramas. Nobility is in short supply here, but there¡¯s sodomy, butchery and too many decapitations to count.
Working from a 30-year-old screenplay, Kitano offers a heterodox account of the 1582 Honnoji Incident, in which warlord Oda Nobunaga (Ryo Kase) was killed in a rebellion organized by one of his generals, Akechi Mitsuhide (Hidetoshi Nishijima). The latter¡¯s motives remain a subject of debate among historians, but ¡°Kubi¡± posits a love triangle involving Nobunaga, Mitsuhide and another retainer, Araki Murashige (Kenichi Endo).
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