| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.2 | The History Cooperative

Film Review

Asia

The Last Samurai. Directed by Edward Zwick. Screenplay by John Logan, Edward Zwick, and Marshall Herskovitz. 2003; color; 154 minutes. Distributed by Warner Brothers.
It may not be fair to expect much in the way of history from Hollywood. Film epics are animated by a different sense of the past than that which motivates most academic histories. The aims of historical epics—bringing history to life and establishing an emotional connection between audiences and characters out of the past—recommend a different mode of exposition. The combination of meticulous attention to historical detail in costumes or sets and a flamboyant ahistoricism in dialogue and plot seems endemic to epic projects. It would be churlish to object to a film simply because it fails to conform to academic standards.	1
Still, a film as self-important as The Last Samurai deserves a good dressing down—and not simply because the film's producers seems to think that Mt. Fuji ought to be visible from everywhere in Japan. The film's epic airs derive from how it stages, in the words of its director (as well as writer and producer), Edward Zwick, "the moment of change from the antique to the modern," a moment that is "especially poignant and dramatic." (Quotations are from the film's official website: lastsamurai.warnerbros.com.) Here that moment is understood to mean the passing of the samurai and their way of life founded on honor, compassion, loyalty, and sacrifice. The modern world is, by contrast, inhabited by feckless politicians and grasping businessmen who are willing to sell Japan's soul in return for quick profit.	. . .

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