Just wondering, anyone seen this?

It's one of my favorite movies and in my opinion it's one of the best movies of all time.

It's been 10 years since I've seen it. I saw it on DVD back in 2004. It's one of the rare movies that has stayed with me. I refuse to watch it again in fear that my opinion of it will be lowered. I didn't even watch the 2003 Miike remake, which I probably should. But I found the black and white cinematography of the original so great it's hard for me to imagine the story in color for some reason.

It won the Jury prize in Cannes back in 1963 I think. Funny story, I had a chance to go to Cannes in 2009. I had some time to kill so I walked to the theater and there is a sort of "walk of fame" with hand prints of famous directors and stars. I went looking for Masaki Kobayashi's hand print, the director of Harakiri and one of my favorite directors but... I couldn't find them. I found Akira Kurosawa's and next to his few feet down were.... Chuck Norris's and Jean Claude Van Damme's, which I thought was pretty awesome. :)

Anyway the scene where the main character played by the great Tatsuya Nakadai goes to his duel was one of the things that really sticked out in the movie for me. You can see a bit of it in the beginning of this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6tp8r0E68w

The story construction is interesting, it's a dark and brutal film that is beautifully shot and directed.

You can find the whole movie up on youtube. It's pretty great.