Big-budget period dramas, often set a millennium or more ago and based on a famous legend or historical incident, are the coin of the Asian coproduction realm.
Major regional players put money in these films because they represent sure bets; everybody in the target territories knows the characters and story. But once the serious money comes in, or national pride is as stake, the fun usually goes out and grandiosity sets in, even if the source material is the stuff of kiddy cartoons.
"Dororo," acclaimed indie filmmaker Akihito Shiota's first venture into the period-fantasy genre, may have serious money behind it, from the TBS network among others, but it is not another solemn-faced epic. It is deep enough in some of its themes, including the meaning of what it is to be human in an age of human engineering, but it also deserves adjectives that used to be rolled out for old Errol Flynn movies: dashing, swashbuckling, rollicking.
The hero, Hyakkimaru (Satoshi Tsumabuki) is a wandering "demon hunter" whose extra body parts -- 48 to be exact -- were grafted onto his head and trunk by a herb doctor (Yoshio Harada) who discovered him as an infant, in a process that echoes "Frankenstein" and "The Island of Dr. Moreau." His warlord father (Kiichi Nakai) gave the originals to 48 demons in exchange for power. When Hyakkimaru kills a demon, he wins back a body part.
He is spotted in one of these battles, with a giant spider demon, by Dororo (Kou Shibasaki), a scrappy female thief who is fascinated by not only Hyakkimaru's prowess with the sword blade poking out of his arm but the new leg he grows after dicing his opponent. Is he a man -- or a monster? After hearing his story from an old minstrel, she decides to join him on his travels and find out for herself.
Dororo dresses, talks and swaggers like a guy, but she obviously has more than a matey interest in this strange, fearsome but good-looking bionic warrior. It is an interest that she hides with a bluster that makes the grim-visaged Hyakkimaru smile. What really bonds them, however, are their various battles with demons. Dororo proves herself a fearless ally -- if one inclined to get into trouble at awkward moments. But Hyakkimaru decides he must go it alone when he finally encounters his most relentless enemy, his own father. Meanwhile, Dororo realizes that her pal is the son of the man who killed her father and left her an orphan. Is this end of a beautiful friendship?
These complications, including Hyakkimaru's vexed relationship with his long-lost brother (Eita) and mother (Mieko Harada), could have easily plunged "Dororo"' into the melodramatic muck (though the title is a dialect word meaning "little monster," not a play on "doro doro" [muddy]). Shiota, however, keeps the focus on core emotions, in an austere-but-powerful manner more reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa in one of his Shakespearean films than the usual Asian period epic. |