Tasogare Seibei & Heart of Darkness

[Lawrence Marceau]

To the KineJapan list,

I gave a screening of Yamada Yoji's The Twilight Samurai for a film
course I teach, and several students remarked that the climactic scene
in which Seibei enters Zen'emon's house and they engage in a dialogue on
the abuse of samurai loyalty by those in power strongly resembles Joseph
Conrad's Heart of Darkness (or, for some students, Francis Ford
Coppola's Apocalypse Now).

I don't have access to the Fujisawa Shuhei source texts for the film,
but I wonder if this perceived resemblance was picked up by any critics,
in Japanese or other languages...

The students thought the film was great; one Japanese student was in
tears at the end. We'll see how it fares at the Oscars soon.

Many thanks for any leads.

Lawrence Marceau