I do not often feel compelled to review material on this website and with how frugally individuals pay attention to new reviews and old productions it seems a little pointless. So let's call this a personal vindication.
Sword of the Stranger is a film I've had sitting on the 'I will watch this soon' list for upwards of 12 months. I always feel I have to spend more time and energy than I am willing to make sure I'm paying proper full attention to a work of cinema. Lo, come tonight, I sat down and I put it on occupying myself with something in the background
...
in order to just get into it, it had been too long. After moments into the movie I found myself losing any attention in and on my supplementary task and just focused on what was happening. It began to draw my breath and attention far far away.
The thing I love with media is there is such a discernible nuance to detail and care if you know where to look. Sword of The Stranger might come off to some as relatively shallow, simple and relatively fun in the action sense. You wouldn't be inherently wrong and you can certainly enjoy the movie for that value but I have found myself FLOORED by all else it accomplishes in a way that no film in recent memory has matched.
Sword of The Stranger has polish in every angle of it's design in a way that rarely drops the ball. I have a lot I want to go over so I will break it down piece by piece. I'll try to avoid spoilers but it will make more sense for those that have also seen it.
I will briefly start with what stops it from being a 10/10. I've been an advocate more and more recently for the idea that 10/10 truly means 10/10, perfect in nearly every single way. This comes damn close but there are a few things that leave it just a little short.
It could do with another 10 minutes of run time to flesh out Itadori, Luo Lang and Shoan a little more, and the sound effects for Tobimaru were a little too close to stock audio to the point it did draw my attention away from the immersion a couple of times.
But that is about it. I mainly say this because while this film thrives with its minute details in its characters it did feel as though actions were less understandable for individuals like Shoan. Not to say they were off-base or misplaced at all, no, their characterisation was still wonderful but I do believe a little more would have gone a long way.
For sound effects there is some recording done for one of the last scenes that could have done with a retake I believe, blood is meant to sound visceral yes, but the way it came through in the audio for that final moment was somewhat odd in a way that made me notice.
But that's it, that's all I can criticise, every single other thing was great.
The opening portion of the film is gritty, artistic, interesting and powerful.
The character introductions while limited for the run time of a movie felt well paced, properly addressed and comfortable to an unrivalled extent. The speed at which we became familiar with Kotaro, Nanashi and even our best boy Tobimaru, was so comfortable that there was no room for odd questioning of their feelings or direction. Even our other characters in the political side of things got enough screen time to be worth our interest and attention but not enough to detract from our commitment to the main cast.
It was near perfection, the pacing of switching to information we needed to be given and enjoying what we already had was masterful, there was no point where it drew boredom and no point where it felt the use of run-time was lost.
The art was incredible. 2007?! I had no idea! Budget aside, the execution on character motions and movements was out of this world. From minute details such closing a door with the butt of a Saya, to the gait of horses and facial expressions of battalions. It's weirdly so universally good that there isn't really a point you can pin as odd or out of place to my knowledge.
Combat, ohohoh, COMBAT! Is FLUID. I would like to talk at large about this in its use so please be careful if you have not yet seen the film as this will have insinuated spoilers.
The combat is immaculate. No it doesn't have unrivalled chaos like super-powers aligned with ear destructive power, no it doesn't have tension and suspense which you would think would be bad. No, it's raw. That's the best way I can put it. It cuts this ridiculously fine line between being super-realistic and super stylised, I'm genuinely still wracking my head around how they managed to make it feel in the middle of both worlds. There are concise movements to each and every attack that leaves little wrong to argue authenticity and then they STILL go out of their way to somehow make action movie over-board movements such as combat-gymnastics and fields of combat feel crazy and awesome.
But the thing I love the most about the fighting, it's raw, as I said. Death is completely unceremonious, it is fast, it is unforgiving and it is final. Built up stories and grown points of narrative end in death just as it happens in life. The fights are not drawn out into displays of dodging and slashing and dodging and slashing... sure there is a tiny bit as necessary to enjoy the style but there is merciless decimation that somehow still made the reality of everyone's goals feel valid and impactful. Like watching the true collision between certain ideals and feelings, climaxes are reached but only one can continue from there and that's all we get to see.
It's flashy, it's strong but its fast and its brutal.
The characterisation was immense. Most stories rest on either the laurels of a backstory or the overwhelming "charisma" of the cast. The balance here, is again, fine as powder. We know just enough, and we see just enough. There is just the right amount of tell don't show, and just the right amount of show don't tell, one is better than the other yes, but they both feel necessary and correct.
We get the production of these character stories slowly and with ample time to feel like we want to know rather than being shovelled the knowledge.
The story is something I adore. So often these days I see people struggle in writing with how scale works. World to universe ending events that do not get the build up or pay-off needed for something SO astronomically large. At the end we always care about the characters and the EXACT defined effects of their interaction with the plot. Here, Sword of The Stanger bakes its cake with only home-grown ingredients. You want force of plot, the characters have it. You want conflict, the characters have it. You want reason, meaning and feelings, the characters have it. There is no amorphous good and bad, there is no 'two-sides of the coin' just history and the present and what these individuals do with it.
Spoilers for the rest of this paragraph: one of my favourite scenes is when we see Nanashi witness the departure, from the estate he just dropped Kotaro off at, of a wounded man. Seeing that something has gone awry he returns into the building to end up confronting the person whom Kotaro had seemed to personally trust. Learning that he had just sold out Kotaro to the Chinese to avoid his own damnation he riles on about how there is no way a mercenary like him would be any different. It drips in back to the story Nanashi himself, had already gone through in his past, as a rounin doing just that. We needn't learn more and we already knew a man such as Nanashi truly would and did do that but when the contradiction arises and he goes to help, not letting something like this happen again, we don't need an explanation, we already know. His change of heart is clear and completely functionally understandable, he never speaks a word of it and never even has to because all his actions will take up the mantle of words for him. And like any good story when those actions play out in his conviction at the end its all a beautiful serenade of his feelings revolving back in on each characters conflicting ideals.
Narratively these sorts of things could be seen as plain and oh, simple direction for the story to have a climax and some fighting, sure. But I truly believe the articulation in the process of getting their through the intentions of well portrayed people is not to be undermined.
The Audio. My fan favourite part to talk about when it comes to media that every single person will either say 'yeah it was okay' or 'yeah it was good'. Never anything more to say, when arguably it is always the most important part. Without music, without the sound, what is our storytelling?
I want to give audio, as it always should have, the proper attention it deserves.
Sword of The Stranger does an excellent job.
Firstly, the effects. Diverse, impactful and well done. I'm not privy to if they did their own sound recording or used pre-existing assets but almost all actions had a complete sense of verisimilitude. Footsteps, sword-swings, picking up objects and cooking food. All were so well integrated into the movements and actions in each scene that it closely resembled the complete accuracy of real life. You never question this in a live-action film because it just works as it does, in animation it is key that it is as close to real as possible. We've all seen the anime version of people eating food, it is soul-destroyingly irritating. We've all watched animation where the footsteps are too uniform and too loud for that one moment that takes you out of the scene. They're not overtly noticeable issues because its all part of making the blending of the reality and background of a story work in correct tandem. People without the ear for this might simply find themselves easily ignoring problems like this or overlooking why a moment felt inauthentic. Sword of The Stranger does this to absolute flawlessness, on a flat basis you might be able to completely forget that sound effects had to be recorded for them to be put in the animation, they blend in perfectly enough that there is no cause to even acknowledge them. But if you have a sharp ear, pay extra attention and you will notice that all the SFX sound in place, exactly as they should be.
The music is the second part of this that requires covering. There are two options for good music, ambience or melody. Of course there is a lot more to dissect in a large sense than that but when a film wants you to care and focus its primed on one of these two subjects. Ambience usually means a continually collection of a theme that can alternate and altercate itself with not too much variance but accompanies well without a lot of distraction. Melody will be the motifs we remember and empowers the situation, that comes back in sequence with characters, situations and scenes.
Sometimes movies make a choice and dedicate themselves, you can easily think back to probably 90% of media you've watched and not remember any of the soundtrack but remember it was probably good. I imagine that's probably a large reason why so many people ignore this point in critical analysis. But you can probably also remember that 10% REALLY WELL. Lord of the Rings, have you seen it? I doubt you could have forgotten those iconic tracks. Do you get the idea? It's why so many anime openings bank on that alone, they can forget the actual soundtrack in the show because we all remember the opening and that does its job for certain impacts, its why it will often very cheaply come up in the final episode of a B-rated show.
What is incredible is when its done right, when we remember and care about the soundtrack because it was also part of the story, the way it TRULY should be, it's why we are watching the media, not reading it. Yuki Kajiura, Hiroyuki Sawano, two incredible examples of composers that know this well, and you probably know their works too.
With that all composed, back to Sword of The Stranger. It's music is good. It's not perfect, but it's really really good. It is predominantly ambience, enough so that I do not frankly remember a good portion of it. But it played a sneaky, sneaky trick. It's primary audio narrative was woven into a lot of the music, sometimes quietly sometimes under different guises. It's a leit-motif and does its job perfectly well. Additionally the theming to oriental and traditional eastern instrumentation comes through wonderful in the use of drums, strings and winds. But then we reach the finale and we hear the recall of the tune and suddenly we can remember what that motif is and the story in the song and its GOES FOR IT. It's to the point its almost the sole track of the film and I suppose to an extent I would have loved to see it go all-out for the entire film. There are some real strong surges with the use of percussion regardless throughout the story regardless, but that last track comes to its pinnacle the same way the story does and its a beautiful unison that had me in chills and near tears. And this was only a 100 minute movie, it takes A LOT to draw that kind of reaction.
I don't want to speak much on voice-acting as I believe its relatively self-explanatory but I do want to highlight its very good. I no qualms with it at all, the same with the production value of all the others aspects I've talked about so far. Kotaro's performance is well-cast, Luo Lang was well-cast, Bai Luan was well-cast... they all were really. Nanashi who get a lot of the stage light has a particularly powerful performance for his emotional scenes and notably a lot of the side characters have a powerful personality for their brief screen time.
The critique I could really pull out here is the princesses who get far too small a lime-light might've had better use with more powerful role to play but it isn't entirely up to the voice-actresses and more so the length of the movie all together.
What haven't I talked about yet? The beautiful mural like backgrounds and the environments and tone that set such a blissful and woeful scene. The spectacular speed of meaning between scenes where it simply bleeds well into the next. The cinematographically artistic choices in representative moments such as the fisherman's line snapping. The attention to foreshadowing and use of weather to set the moment.
There is honestly so, so, so much I could praise this movie for and MULTIPLE scenes that I specifically in the moment knew I would be remembering.
Spoilers for this paragraph: The Bandits in the camp that come to attack Kotaro and Nanashi, where he asks Kotaro to keep talking and we hear about his story in a situation that is adjacent to its importance.
The death of Mu You in the final portion of the movie, with her brutally impaled against the wood as Itadori informs his archers to pincushion her.
And many more, but I don't need to put them all here.
My total thoughts on Sword of The Stranger are unique to most other films I've enjoyed. It was strong, impactful, memorable, unique, fun and dark. It doesn't have an extremely detailed or intricate plot nor stakes that drive too high but it nonetheless makes you feel more attached and connected to its happenings than anything else I've seen in a long time. It drew real emotional reactions from me and I cared so much so that I truly wish there was more to see. The start, the chapters throughout and the climax are all just fantastic to watch. The characters, the music, the general premise and use of film as a whole is executed with a care and passion not only rarely seen these days but rarely seen all-together.
Sword of The Stranger is a film I highly recommend. If you want an under-spoken, near perfect look at characters that just live for themselves then I don't think you'll find many better examples than this. Nanshi, Kotaro and Tobimaru's brief but intimate journey together is one that is fraught with feelings more real than many, many other stories out there. And even if its just to see some swords swing and blood-let, this is still a impeccable film to watch.
I cannot recommend Sword of The Stanger enough.
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Apr 10, 2021
Stranger: Mukou Hadan
(Anime)
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I do not often feel compelled to review material on this website and with how frugally individuals pay attention to new reviews and old productions it seems a little pointless. So let's call this a personal vindication.
Sword of the Stranger is a film I've had sitting on the 'I will watch this soon' list for upwards of 12 months. I always feel I have to spend more time and energy than I am willing to make sure I'm paying proper full attention to a work of cinema. Lo, come tonight, I sat down and I put it on occupying myself with something in the background ... |
