Shogun (2024 Miniseries, the rest)
Apr. 26th, 2024 01:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakThis week, the 2024 miniseries version of Shogun ended. All in all, I stand by my original assessment after the first three episodes: it‘s very good, both as its own thing and as an adaptation, and while I might quibble with some choices, I can‘t argue with the overall result.
It‘s worth repeating: Shogun the book by James Clavell was published in the 1970s. The first filmed version was a miniseries from the early 1980s, starring Richard Chamberlain as John Blackthorne and Toshiro Mifune as Toranaga. It was filmed on location in Japan. This must also have been one of the first US tv productions which had a considerable part of the spoken dialogue in a language not English but original to the setting. However, the way the 1980s series chose to handle this was by letting the audience remain in Blackthorne‘s pov the entire time, with the exception of Toranaga‘s final monologue. Meaning we the audience understand as much as Blackthorne does or doesn‘t, depending on whether Mariko or in a few scenes Alvito are present to translate for him and depending on the few Japanese phrases he‘s seen to pick up. Now, this is NOT, repeat not, what the book does, where a great part of the plot is told from the pov of the various Japanese characters, not just when interacting with Blackthorne but with each other, and this inevitably meant the 1980s series lost much of the backstory and characterisation of the Japanese characters. (Otoh, it is superb in getting the „stranger in a strange land“ feeling across, and also how Blackthorne‘s pov both of Japan and himself changes through the story.)
The 2024 story used a different approach from the start. Not only did it use the backstory and Japanese/Japanese interactions from the novel, it started with them, and not with Blackthorne, and in at least one important case (Ochiba) rejected the novel backstory and replaced it with a different one. (Or perhaps that‘s exaggarating, but not by much. I suppose it‘s still possible that 2024 Ochiba has the same reason for her hostility towards Toranaga that she has in the novel as opposed to the reason she gives out loud, or in addition to it. But the novel‘s Ochiba while getting along well with Mariko does not have the bockstory of a shared childhood and youth which turned out to be absolutely crucial for the 2024 miniseries version.) While it‘s also true for the novel that Blackthorne is never a white savior character and that the later half of the novel sees Mariko becoming more and more prominent as the person whose actions and decisions the plot is focused on, while Blackthorne becomes more of an observer and helper character, the 2024 miniseries tilts its weight towards Mariko as the central character far earlier. (And with no offense to the actress playing her in the 1980s, Anna Sarwai as Mariko takes that chance and runs with it to give one of the all time great tv persormances.) Mariko‘s backstory is important in the novel, but the relevance it has for her present day life is definitely more fleshed out in 2024. And she’s not the only woman for whom this is the case. While the 1980s miniseries showed supporting characters like Kiku and Gin in a blink and you miss it silent moment or several (due to the language and pov decision), the 2024 version while not giving them the same room the novel does does retain several of their important scenes, including Gin‘s negotiation with Toranaga which by its placing in the episode is even given added dramatic weight. But the female supporting character gaining the most in 2024 is Fuji(ko, in the novel). Not only do we meet her already in the pilot and see the horrible tragedy with her husband and child instead of being told by it (like Blackthorne is) much later, she‘s given her own emotional arc and the conclusion in the last episode where it becomes interwoven with Blackthorne‘s and ends on a more positive note than it does in the novel. Fuji in the book is still determined to die as per the original agreement. Fujii in 2024 wants to live again, though as a nun, not as a consort, and the final scene between her and Blackthorne on the lake, where they help each other in their grief to let go is deeply touching and utterly original to the show.
(It‘s also necessary to my mind that Fujii survives because while no one could accuse the novel of being squeamish, the 2024 miniseries in fact adds to the death toll - both Toranaga‘s son Naga and his friend and Mariko‘s father-in-law Hiromatsu do not die in the book.)
One quibble I had with Blackthorne‘s 2024 characterisation dissolved itself in the last episode, where it turned out that a key character moment for him from the book was not, as I had previously thought, eliminated, but had been placed at a different point of the story. It is this: in the book, about a third in, when Toranaga leaves Blackthorne, Mariko and Yabu(shige) behind in the village Ajiro, he says Blackthorne should use the next six months to learn Japanese. Yabu, being Yabu, gives his own order as the village‘s overlord that if Blackthorne does not learn fluent Japanese within six months, a sizable amount of the villagers (I forgot if he says all or goes for decimation, it‘s been decades since my last reread) will die, in order to motivate Blackthorne and them. Blackthorne is horrified. While he‘s pretty good with languages, he‘s sure he won‘t be able to become fluent in Japanese in six months. But he has picked up enough about Japanese customs from Mariko to hit on an idea of how to save the villagers: he threatens to commit suicide if this order is not revoked. Yabu first doubts he‘ll do it, Blackthorne being a barbarian, but when Blackthorne has the dagger in hand and is starting to stab, he gives in and promises that however much Blackthorne will pick up in six months, it will be enough, the villagers won‘t be harmed.
Now, when that scene didn‘t happen in episodes 3 and 4, I regretted it, because not only is this a big turning point not least for how the Japanese characters, including Mariko, see Blackthorne - their intimacy etc. happens after - , and for how Blackthorne sees himself (the aftermath is basically a rebirth scene, this is when his Japanese life starts), it also is perhaps his most selfless and sympathetic moment in the entire story. He‘s heroic at other points, but usually either to save his own neck or in connection with Mariko and/or Toranaga. This, by contrast, is about saving the villagers, who are strangers, and with no benefit for himself.
However, as mentioned: in the last episode the 2024 miniseries does give Blackthorne this scene, albeit in a different context, and thus places it as the near culmination of his personal arc (the scene with Fuji later completes it, hence near culmination ), as well as showing it as a result of the continuing effect Mariko has on him, even after death, and as what he has learned. 2024 Blackthorne still threatens - and is truly willing - to kill himself to save the villagers, and because this isn‘t one third in but near the end of the story, the audience as well as Toranaga (who takes Yabu‘s place as the order giver in the situation, and not about learning Japanese, either) believes he‘d do it, too. It gives Blackthorne and Toranaga an emotional showdown, too, that feels narratively satisfying.
Another alteration that shows the difference between what you can do in a novel and what you can do on screen is how the audience finally is privy to Toranaga‘s thoughts, what the plan was and the key role Mariko played in it etc. In the book, this happens when we switch to Toranaga‘s pov and get to know his thoughts in the final scene. (And then there‘s an Olympian narration epilogue telling us how the much anticipated battle went down, what happened to Ishido etc, but I don’t count that as an actual scene.) The 1980s miniseries tried to solve it by making it a first person monologue spoken (in English, not Japanese, as opposed to Toranaga’s other dialogue in the show) while we see Toshiro Mifune but hear Orson Welles in the final scene. What the 2024 miniseries does, by contrast, is to let Toranaga be Yabu(shige)‘s second (which he isn‘t in the novel, where Yabu‘s seppuku isn‘t shown on page but reported by Omi), and because there are no other witnesses and because Yabu is seconds away from dying, it makes sense that Toronaga would answer (some) of his questions truthfully. Making this a dialogue scene instead of a monologue is something that‘s just more efficient in a dramatic visual medium, not to mention it gives Yabu closure in more senses than one.
But really, I have to return to Mariko when thinking about what affected me most about the 2024 series. By introducing her before she ever meets Blackthorne - in the scene with Fuji, which btw gets a haunting echo in Fuji‘s last scene with Blackthorne -, by taking what the novel provided about her background and building her characterisation around it, by giving her the childhood friendship with Ochiba until her father kills Ochiba‘s father, by actually showing us the scene where Toranaga asks her whether she‘s ready (without spoiling what the plan is, but establishing she does have a choice) - by all these things and more, she‘s a richly realized, fascinating character throughout the story from the get go till the end, and arguably its lead. One complaint I‘ve seen is that the romance is reduced as compared to the book and the 1980s series. Yes and no, and depends of what you mean by romance. All three versions of Shogun let Mariko and Blackthorne first have sex in silence, with her pretending it was a servant later, and because it then turns out her husband is still alive, it stays a singular experience for a while. However, the novel and the 1980s series let them resume sexual relationships on the regular on the road from the village to Edo and then Osaka without the pretense of Mariko not being herself. The 2024 series doesn‘t do this but goes for pining and sexual tension after that first encounter for far longer. (In fact, in the 2024 version these two have sex only twice, the second time being in Osaka after Mariko won her showdown with Ishido.)
This does not mean less eroticism or romance, imo, but a more subtle kind. The visit to Kiku is another good example of how similar content is told differently in a different medium - in the novel, Kiku picks up on the vibe between Mariko and the Anjin immediately as well, but there she decides to both play into it and dissolve the tension via making them laugh, whereas in the 2024 miniseries she offers them emotional release via letting Mariko „translate“ something Mariko actually feels, and deliberately places herself so that Blackthorne has to look at Mariko, not her. It makes for a scene with far more sexual intensity than if on screen sex had happened right then and there. And then there‘s Mariko praying the Pater Noster in Latin while Blackthorne beyond a paper screen recites it in English, which is the sexiest scene of people doing unsexy things I‘ve seen since Philip drew Elizabeth‘s damaged tooth in secret in The Americans (you had to be there). As for romance, the 2024 series makes an art out of the tender and meaningful touching of hands, and uses one of its slight twists from the book to great effect - in the novel, Mariko had asked Yabu to be her second in her threatened seppuku re: the freeing of the hostages and while he‘s secretly in cahoots with Ishido, he does show up and is there; in the 2024 series, she asks one of the two Christian regents as a fellow Christian (i.e. to save her from technically committing suicide and damming herself to hell), that guy does not show up and Blackthorne, who until that point has tried everything to talk her out of this, steps up, because love means putting the woman you love first even if it means doing something that will detroy you, and also the scriptwriters presumably have seen some of the same films and tv shows I did.
Complaints: there was exactly one episode which came across as a bit treading water the first time I watched it, though in retrospect that was because I knew what had to happen in order to continue with the novel‘s plot and was confused as to how this would get us there. Also, the opening „flashback“/hallucination/dream of Blackthorne‘s in the last episode - where it seems he‘s an old man returned to England dreaming of the past, and only later we realise that was a dream of present day Blackthorne of a possible future he lets go off during the episode - was unnecessarily confusing, imo. But neither issue takes away from what truly was a superb series.
It‘s worth repeating: Shogun the book by James Clavell was published in the 1970s. The first filmed version was a miniseries from the early 1980s, starring Richard Chamberlain as John Blackthorne and Toshiro Mifune as Toranaga. It was filmed on location in Japan. This must also have been one of the first US tv productions which had a considerable part of the spoken dialogue in a language not English but original to the setting. However, the way the 1980s series chose to handle this was by letting the audience remain in Blackthorne‘s pov the entire time, with the exception of Toranaga‘s final monologue. Meaning we the audience understand as much as Blackthorne does or doesn‘t, depending on whether Mariko or in a few scenes Alvito are present to translate for him and depending on the few Japanese phrases he‘s seen to pick up. Now, this is NOT, repeat not, what the book does, where a great part of the plot is told from the pov of the various Japanese characters, not just when interacting with Blackthorne but with each other, and this inevitably meant the 1980s series lost much of the backstory and characterisation of the Japanese characters. (Otoh, it is superb in getting the „stranger in a strange land“ feeling across, and also how Blackthorne‘s pov both of Japan and himself changes through the story.)
The 2024 story used a different approach from the start. Not only did it use the backstory and Japanese/Japanese interactions from the novel, it started with them, and not with Blackthorne, and in at least one important case (Ochiba) rejected the novel backstory and replaced it with a different one. (Or perhaps that‘s exaggarating, but not by much. I suppose it‘s still possible that 2024 Ochiba has the same reason for her hostility towards Toranaga that she has in the novel as opposed to the reason she gives out loud, or in addition to it. But the novel‘s Ochiba while getting along well with Mariko does not have the bockstory of a shared childhood and youth which turned out to be absolutely crucial for the 2024 miniseries version.) While it‘s also true for the novel that Blackthorne is never a white savior character and that the later half of the novel sees Mariko becoming more and more prominent as the person whose actions and decisions the plot is focused on, while Blackthorne becomes more of an observer and helper character, the 2024 miniseries tilts its weight towards Mariko as the central character far earlier. (And with no offense to the actress playing her in the 1980s, Anna Sarwai as Mariko takes that chance and runs with it to give one of the all time great tv persormances.) Mariko‘s backstory is important in the novel, but the relevance it has for her present day life is definitely more fleshed out in 2024. And she’s not the only woman for whom this is the case. While the 1980s miniseries showed supporting characters like Kiku and Gin in a blink and you miss it silent moment or several (due to the language and pov decision), the 2024 version while not giving them the same room the novel does does retain several of their important scenes, including Gin‘s negotiation with Toranaga which by its placing in the episode is even given added dramatic weight. But the female supporting character gaining the most in 2024 is Fuji(ko, in the novel). Not only do we meet her already in the pilot and see the horrible tragedy with her husband and child instead of being told by it (like Blackthorne is) much later, she‘s given her own emotional arc and the conclusion in the last episode where it becomes interwoven with Blackthorne‘s and ends on a more positive note than it does in the novel. Fuji in the book is still determined to die as per the original agreement. Fujii in 2024 wants to live again, though as a nun, not as a consort, and the final scene between her and Blackthorne on the lake, where they help each other in their grief to let go is deeply touching and utterly original to the show.
(It‘s also necessary to my mind that Fujii survives because while no one could accuse the novel of being squeamish, the 2024 miniseries in fact adds to the death toll - both Toranaga‘s son Naga and his friend and Mariko‘s father-in-law Hiromatsu do not die in the book.)
One quibble I had with Blackthorne‘s 2024 characterisation dissolved itself in the last episode, where it turned out that a key character moment for him from the book was not, as I had previously thought, eliminated, but had been placed at a different point of the story. It is this: in the book, about a third in, when Toranaga leaves Blackthorne, Mariko and Yabu(shige) behind in the village Ajiro, he says Blackthorne should use the next six months to learn Japanese. Yabu, being Yabu, gives his own order as the village‘s overlord that if Blackthorne does not learn fluent Japanese within six months, a sizable amount of the villagers (I forgot if he says all or goes for decimation, it‘s been decades since my last reread) will die, in order to motivate Blackthorne and them. Blackthorne is horrified. While he‘s pretty good with languages, he‘s sure he won‘t be able to become fluent in Japanese in six months. But he has picked up enough about Japanese customs from Mariko to hit on an idea of how to save the villagers: he threatens to commit suicide if this order is not revoked. Yabu first doubts he‘ll do it, Blackthorne being a barbarian, but when Blackthorne has the dagger in hand and is starting to stab, he gives in and promises that however much Blackthorne will pick up in six months, it will be enough, the villagers won‘t be harmed.
Now, when that scene didn‘t happen in episodes 3 and 4, I regretted it, because not only is this a big turning point not least for how the Japanese characters, including Mariko, see Blackthorne - their intimacy etc. happens after - , and for how Blackthorne sees himself (the aftermath is basically a rebirth scene, this is when his Japanese life starts), it also is perhaps his most selfless and sympathetic moment in the entire story. He‘s heroic at other points, but usually either to save his own neck or in connection with Mariko and/or Toranaga. This, by contrast, is about saving the villagers, who are strangers, and with no benefit for himself.
However, as mentioned: in the last episode the 2024 miniseries does give Blackthorne this scene, albeit in a different context, and thus places it as the near culmination of his personal arc (the scene with Fuji later completes it, hence near culmination ), as well as showing it as a result of the continuing effect Mariko has on him, even after death, and as what he has learned. 2024 Blackthorne still threatens - and is truly willing - to kill himself to save the villagers, and because this isn‘t one third in but near the end of the story, the audience as well as Toranaga (who takes Yabu‘s place as the order giver in the situation, and not about learning Japanese, either) believes he‘d do it, too. It gives Blackthorne and Toranaga an emotional showdown, too, that feels narratively satisfying.
Another alteration that shows the difference between what you can do in a novel and what you can do on screen is how the audience finally is privy to Toranaga‘s thoughts, what the plan was and the key role Mariko played in it etc. In the book, this happens when we switch to Toranaga‘s pov and get to know his thoughts in the final scene. (And then there‘s an Olympian narration epilogue telling us how the much anticipated battle went down, what happened to Ishido etc, but I don’t count that as an actual scene.) The 1980s miniseries tried to solve it by making it a first person monologue spoken (in English, not Japanese, as opposed to Toranaga’s other dialogue in the show) while we see Toshiro Mifune but hear Orson Welles in the final scene. What the 2024 miniseries does, by contrast, is to let Toranaga be Yabu(shige)‘s second (which he isn‘t in the novel, where Yabu‘s seppuku isn‘t shown on page but reported by Omi), and because there are no other witnesses and because Yabu is seconds away from dying, it makes sense that Toronaga would answer (some) of his questions truthfully. Making this a dialogue scene instead of a monologue is something that‘s just more efficient in a dramatic visual medium, not to mention it gives Yabu closure in more senses than one.
But really, I have to return to Mariko when thinking about what affected me most about the 2024 series. By introducing her before she ever meets Blackthorne - in the scene with Fuji, which btw gets a haunting echo in Fuji‘s last scene with Blackthorne -, by taking what the novel provided about her background and building her characterisation around it, by giving her the childhood friendship with Ochiba until her father kills Ochiba‘s father, by actually showing us the scene where Toranaga asks her whether she‘s ready (without spoiling what the plan is, but establishing she does have a choice) - by all these things and more, she‘s a richly realized, fascinating character throughout the story from the get go till the end, and arguably its lead. One complaint I‘ve seen is that the romance is reduced as compared to the book and the 1980s series. Yes and no, and depends of what you mean by romance. All three versions of Shogun let Mariko and Blackthorne first have sex in silence, with her pretending it was a servant later, and because it then turns out her husband is still alive, it stays a singular experience for a while. However, the novel and the 1980s series let them resume sexual relationships on the regular on the road from the village to Edo and then Osaka without the pretense of Mariko not being herself. The 2024 series doesn‘t do this but goes for pining and sexual tension after that first encounter for far longer. (In fact, in the 2024 version these two have sex only twice, the second time being in Osaka after Mariko won her showdown with Ishido.)
This does not mean less eroticism or romance, imo, but a more subtle kind. The visit to Kiku is another good example of how similar content is told differently in a different medium - in the novel, Kiku picks up on the vibe between Mariko and the Anjin immediately as well, but there she decides to both play into it and dissolve the tension via making them laugh, whereas in the 2024 miniseries she offers them emotional release via letting Mariko „translate“ something Mariko actually feels, and deliberately places herself so that Blackthorne has to look at Mariko, not her. It makes for a scene with far more sexual intensity than if on screen sex had happened right then and there. And then there‘s Mariko praying the Pater Noster in Latin while Blackthorne beyond a paper screen recites it in English, which is the sexiest scene of people doing unsexy things I‘ve seen since Philip drew Elizabeth‘s damaged tooth in secret in The Americans (you had to be there). As for romance, the 2024 series makes an art out of the tender and meaningful touching of hands, and uses one of its slight twists from the book to great effect - in the novel, Mariko had asked Yabu to be her second in her threatened seppuku re: the freeing of the hostages and while he‘s secretly in cahoots with Ishido, he does show up and is there; in the 2024 series, she asks one of the two Christian regents as a fellow Christian (i.e. to save her from technically committing suicide and damming herself to hell), that guy does not show up and Blackthorne, who until that point has tried everything to talk her out of this, steps up, because love means putting the woman you love first even if it means doing something that will detroy you, and also the scriptwriters presumably have seen some of the same films and tv shows I did.
Complaints: there was exactly one episode which came across as a bit treading water the first time I watched it, though in retrospect that was because I knew what had to happen in order to continue with the novel‘s plot and was confused as to how this would get us there. Also, the opening „flashback“/hallucination/dream of Blackthorne‘s in the last episode - where it seems he‘s an old man returned to England dreaming of the past, and only later we realise that was a dream of present day Blackthorne of a possible future he lets go off during the episode - was unnecessarily confusing, imo. But neither issue takes away from what truly was a superb series.
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