Samurai and Gunslingers: Kurosawa, Peckinpah, and the Necessary Outlaw

            “If they move, kill ‘em!”

            Unlikely first words for a would-be protagonist to utter, yet, the first time we meet Pike Bishop that is exactly what he says. The beginning of Sam Peckinpah’s seminal 1969 masterpiece, The Wild Bunch, is almost as iconic as its ending. Plenty of guts, but almost no glory whatsoever. Many films endeavor to let the audience understand who their hero is at the beginning of the story, so that we can root for them the entire time. Peckinpah tempts us into believing that is what we are seeing- Pike, the ruthless outlaw (played by William Holden). In truth, we don’t see who our hero really is until the end of the movie- Pike, the moral man in an immoral world.

            In a time set not long before The Wild Bunch, Sanjuro saunters in to a desolate town somewhere in late-feudal Japan, and finds himself embroiled in both sides of a gang war. Such is the set-up of Kurosawa’s 1961 stroke of genius, Yojimbo. In the same way Peckinpah fools us, Kurosawa sets up Sanjuro (the incredible Toshiro Mifune) as a ronin (a samurai without a master), a killer for hire. Yet again, we do not see the true nature of the man until the end of the film- Sanjuro, the imperfect savior.

            With these two films, we see a broad-stroke connection between two (otherwise unconnected) legendary filmmakers- Akira Kurosawa and Sam Peckinpah. The underlying theme between nearly all of their mutual works: The Necessary Outlaw.

            The concept of the anti-hero is hardly foreign to the histories of art and literature. The timeless paradox of someone who does wrong in order to accomplish good, embodied in a single characterization. Even in the earliest known written fiction text of the English language, Beowulf, the main character demonstrates this classic archetype. But we can go farther back than that. Many more classic fables, such as the Egyptian tale of Neferkaptah (who steals the Book of Thoth), or Homer’s epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey, center around such men (Whether it be the over-confident Achilles coming to sack Troy, or the hunted Odysseus just trying to make his way back home to Ithaca). The draw of this character is so universal that even William Shakespeare uses the same template in each and every one of his great tragedies, from Romeo and Juliet, to Hamlet and Macbeth. It is no surprise that with the advent of film, the great anti-hero made his way to the silver screen. Even now, the cinema is saturated with this necessary outlaw. His ranks include superheroes (Bruce Wayne- Batman, Tony Stark- Iron Man), cowboys (The Man with No Name), cops (Dirty Harry), and many others. Yet, in light of all this, no other modern filmmakers have made such profound use of the necessary outlaw than Akira Kurosawa and Sam Peckinpah.

            Kurosawa’s career is marked by the theme of this characterization. Even from his earlier works such as 1950’s Rashomon, the outlaw has been portrayed as being forced into action, if not on moral grounds. The character has been featured so many times in Kurosawa’s catalogue of work, it is almost impossible to distinguish one from the next. From the rash Kikuchyo in Seven Samurai, to the father out for revenge in The Bad Sleep Well, and even the unassuming peasant thief in Kagemusha, the archetype of an unavoidable anti-hero, whether his end is heroic or tragic, has found deep root in so many of Kurosawa’s masterworks.

            In 1961, Akira Kurosawa released another in a long string of masterpieces going back from before World War II. He titled it Yojimbo (The Bodyguard). It was based off the popular American novel Red Harvest by author Dashiell Hammet (incidentally, George Lucas is a great admirer of Kurosawa, and while filming Star Wars (1977), he codenamed the production Blue Harvest). The film centers round actor (and long-time Kurosawa collaborator) Toshiro Mifune. Kurosawa himself said, “Anything good I have ever done has been with him…” and it is no better evident than here. Mifune is a prototype for Clint Eastwood’s ‘The Man with No Name’ (a fact ever relevant in view of the Leone/Eastwood collaboration A Fistful of Dollars, a nearly note-for-note remake of Yojimbo, the first installment of the Man with No Name Trilogy, and Eastwood’s feature film debut…).  As if to simply highlight the fact, Mifune introduces himself as Kuwabatake Sanjuro or ‘Thirty-year old Mulberry Field’, “Though I am almost forty,” he adds. This template is especially suited to the necessary outlaw, as if to suggest that he is no one, but could be anyone. A man caught in a tide of conflict he has no stake in nevertheless he must find his footing to survive.

            Upon learning of the town’s plight (underscored in a delightfully dark moment as the first sight we come across- a dog meandering by carrying a severed human hand) Sanjuro hires himself out to the highest bidder in the gangs’ war for supremacy. Even though he is strong, cunning, and charismatic, we still believe he is a villain. It is through his later actions, playing to the two sides against each other that we begin to think he may really be that most epochal of protagonists- the anti-hero.

            There is a humorous, if slightly disturbing scene that begins the third act of the film in which the restaurant owner has carried Sanjuro away from the town in a basket (this of course following the outlaw’s escape from his captors). We see him stand up, out of the basket, and try to hold himself without falling over. We see the terrible bruises, lacerations, and other wounds the beatings that left him nearly paralyzed incurred. “You look like hell,” his friend observes. Sanjuro grins in an attempt to lighten the mood, but instead invokes the image of a crazed madman. “It’s worse when you smile…” says the friend. Indeed it is. Through subtle plotting, genuine good intentions, and an ultimate demonstration of desire to save the poor souls in the town, Kurosawa has encouraged the audience to grow fond of his bad man doing good. But in this moment, we are unsure once again of whom this unfamiliar savior really is. Is he a flawed hero, rough on the outside, but inside a guardian angel of the weak? Or is he a vengeful demon, sent from the netherworld to punish the men who harm the innocent and defenseless?

            Kurosawa aims to leave this question unanswered. His anti-hero is nameless, faceless, incomprehensible. Sanjuro is not a man, not a character. He is force of nature, karma personified. The humble are rewarded and the haughty destroyed. In Yojimbo the situation makes the outlaw’s existence necessary. Both sides are wrong, so he does not take sides. They are all guilty, so they all must die. But he is not one of the people either, he does not belong, so he cannot be a hero. “Go home,” he tells the young guard, “a life spent farming and eating porridge is best.” He knows what the way is, even if he cannot follow it. After the matter is concluded, Sanjuro simply leaves town. Kurosawa shows us, there is no place in the world for the flawed hero.

            If Akira Kurosawa defines the paradox of a world that needs an outlaw but has no place for him, then Sam Peckinpah puts said outlaw under the microscope. In the wake of numerous ‘spaghetti westerns’ coming from Italy, Hollywood was once again in a clamor for classic adventures in the Old West. But this time, they had to echo the dark poetry made popular by Sergio Leone and others. By 1969, there had been precious few American installments to the genre that lived up to the one-two punches of Leone’s works (with the notable exception of 1968’s Hang ‘Em High). Clint Eastwood was still delivering a string of powerhouse performances, but as of late his concentration had been mostly outside the western genre, with two of his three 1968 films being experiments with different categories- the cop drama Coogan’s Bluff and the war thriller Where Eagles Dare. His later triumphs such as Two Mules for Sister Sara and High Plains Drifter were still off on the horizon. With the production (and popularity) of western films treading water, Sam Peckinpah embarked upon an ambitious and costly venture- to make an epic American western with a fresh twist. The result was The Wild Bunch.

            Peckinpah’s epic film centers round a band of aging outlaws in the quickly disappearing west and Mexico circa 1913-1915. The troupe is led by William Holden as Pike Bishop. The bunch rallies up for one last score while trying outrun a posse on their tail led by Pike’s old friend Deke. The film opens with a shot of children dropping scorpions into a swarm of red ants. Though the scorpions are larger, stronger, and fiercer, they cannot stop the tide of ants smothering them. The camera then pans up to see the bunch riding by on horses and Peckinpah seems to say that these men are scorpions themselves. They are strong, fierce products of a quickly disappearing era. They are fated to be overcome by the vast swarm of ants known as progress.

            When we are first introduced to Pike, he orders one of his men “If they move, kill ‘em!” And with that pronouncement we are set down a road of violence, retribution, and desperation. The first turn is the group’s bloody escape from the town in which we witness Pike kill one of his own badly wounded men, refuse his burial, and threaten all the others with violence over a few bags of what turn out to be washers. We feel we are meant to believe that Pike cannot be our hero, he must be our villain. The confusion comes when the men opposing our supposed villain aren’t any better. In fact, they seem worse in some ways. This sort of moral conundrum is Sam Peckinpah’s bread and butter. The brutal violence that has been the benchmark of his career serves only as a vessel to bring this true conflict to the fore.

            Soon we begin to see Pike making decisions that do not seem to reflect the character set up in the violent opening shootout. When he kills his own man, it is out of compassion, not cold-bloodedness. He gradually turns from being concerned about his own affairs to those of his men. His kindness escalates from there, with acts such as refusing to kill train guards, to ripping off a Mexican Federale in order to help his friend Angel’s family, then offering to buy the man’s life back when he is caught. Slowly but surely, one begins not to know what to make of the outlaw.

            The defining moment for Pike is not in any of these actions, but in the obvious despondency he feels when the Mexican general refuses to give up Angel. In the end, he feels no joy in wine, women, or song. He goes to face the general and his troops, even though it means death, because he is a moral man. A moral man in a hopelessly immoral world. It is this character trait that makes Pike an anti-hero. It is also his fatal flaw. The famous final march in the film is almost an underlining statement of the character of Pike and his men- Dutch, Lyle, and Tector. They walk calmly to certain death with big grins on their faces. When the chaos erupts, it is four against two hundred. Once again we see the scorpions- bigger, stronger- swarmed by ants. But this time, the scorpions take the ants with them. Pike’s final moral act at last lets us understand who he is- a man trying to do the best he can when the world has gone mad around him. His ultimate desperation is to save someone-anyone- nameless innocents who have not the ability to stand up for themselves. Peckinpah’s point seems to be at once self-reflective and prophetic: In a life filled with selfish actions, make your last one selfless.

            Both Yojimbo and The Wild Bunch readily accept and demonstrate that the outlaw is necessary in the world in which we live- a world that is closing in on itself, and seeks to regulate the behavior and order of the lives led within it. Kurosawa and Peckinpah challenge our ingrained perceptions of the appropriate and the necessary. They instead pose to us the question, “What makes an outlaw?” Does it take a criminal, a vagabond, a sinner? Or does it take a hero? A man fully conscious of his limitations, and yet accepts them, is able to walk upright amongst the evildoers in his midst. The world is wrong, they tell us, and it takes an outlaw to make it right.