The Hidden Fortress

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The Hidden Fortress (Japanese: 隠し砦の三悪人; Kakushi toride no san akunin; literally, The Three Villains of the Hidden Fortress) is a 1958 film by Akira Kurosawa, starring Toshiro Mifune as General Rokurota Makabe and Misa Uehara as Princess Yuki (Referred to as "Yukihime" in Japanese.)

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Makabe's mission is to help and protect the princess. He is accompanied (or perhaps encumbered) by two luckless peasants, Tahei and Matakichi (Minoru Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara), who exist largely to provide comic relief. They are later joined by a farmer’s daughter (Toshiko Higuchi), whom they acquire at an inn from a slave-trader, or procuror. Together, the five make an arduous and desperate trek through enemy territory, transporting a treasure of gold that the princess and the general hope to use to rebuild the princess' military to one day retake her land and rebuild her kingdom.

Tahei and Matakichi, the two peasants who find themselves captured and put to forced labor by the Princess’s enemies, escape only to find themselves ensnared by the machinations of a bandit, who is actually General Makabe Rokurota. The spoiled and arrogant princess feigns being mute to avoid betraying her nobility through her speech; she demands that Makabe buy the farm-girl from a procurer to set her free, after which she repeatedly demonstrates deep wells of nobility by staying with the group and doing everything she can to help and protect the princess. In these ways and in others, the Hidden Fortress rises above its genre, transcending the idea of adventure as a mere catalog of exciting events to become an exploration of characters demonstrating personal virtues despite the harshness and violence of the world they live in.

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Analysis

The Hidden Fortress employs a non-traditional structure with respect to the characters, whereby the audience is gradually introduced to each character—often through layers of misdirection. This is an idea that becomes a recurring theme in the script, as character development follows introduction and characters strip away their disguises to reveal unexpected aspects of themselves. In fact, rather than write a formal script, Kurosawa and his screenwriter simply set out to create a variety of interesting characters, then created a rough storyline to bring them together. He effectively allowed the story to write itself before the camera.

As a film, The Hidden Fortress demonstrates what Kurosawa was capable of at the height of his powers as a filmmaker, with a rain of plot complications, hair's breadth escapes through visually compelling locations, and rich character development, brought together through tightly realized action in visually compelling settings.

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Influence

The influence of The Hidden Fortress can be seen in George Lucas's Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, particularly in the technique of telling of the story from the points of view of the film's lowliest characters. The relationship of R2-D2 and C-3PO is very similar to that of Tahei and Matakichi. Also, the characters of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Princess Leia mirror those of the general Rokurota Makabe and Princess Yuki (although in Episode IV, the two characters never meet on-screen). Yukihime's technique of disguising herself as a peasant is mirrored in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace by Queen Amidala, who disguises herself as the handmaiden Padmé. Early in the development of Star Wars, George Lucas even considered Toshiro Mifune for the role of Obi-Wan.