Mini-Review: Staggeringly beautiful and poignant. Often missed is the subtlety behind the seemingly didactic message-pounding. Zushio essentially avenges his suffering on Sansho, banishing him and his family. How much mercy was truly shown? Instead of drawing a firm line between 'human' and 'beastly' the lines were constantly blurred, and humans seem almost intrinsically brutal. A priest sells them into slavery, a priest help Zushio escape. Beautiful tones of grey everywhere, visually and thematically.

Mini-Review: Yamanaka truly seems like a lost genius. He managed a measured balance between innocent humanist leanings and despairing cruelty, and that truly gave this film its poignancy. Some of the photography was outstanding, and the acting was very natural. Shinza and Unno were such fascinating characters, caught in an inescapable plight. Great film.

Mini-Review: In many ways I could see this as even better than Strangelove. It looked good; some of the long cuts through the trenches were amazing. It cast a keenly critical glance at the inhumanity of war & power, and did so with increasingly subtle layering - managing to balance between Rousseau and Hobbes so cleverly. It also sits superbly well against 12 Angry Men as 1957's amazing pieces on justice.