Mifune: The Last Samurai [dir: Steven Okazaki]

A true hero and legend of Japanese cinema, the great Toshiro Mifune is celebrated in this documentary narrated by Keanu Reeves. If you’ve read the sublime biography The Emperor and the Wolf, about Mifune and his long-time collaborator Akira Kurosawa, then you will treasure this. [Christopher Ratcliff]

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000206/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t12#self
MIFUNE: The Last Samurai (Documentary)
Narrator

https://vimeo.com/180739410

... someone's been busy....

Was it at least easy getting interviews with Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, and getting Keanu Reeves to narrate? How could they not want to be involved and talk about Mifune?

It took a while to get to Spielberg and Scorsese, but once we did, they said yes immediately. Those films are a treasured part of their film education. Spielberg and Scorsese really articulated, in a way the Japanese couldn’t, just the huge impact he had and those films had on world cinema. Of course, we did have to wait around for them to become available. We had really short windows of opportunity there where we just had to mobilize quickly and get to New York and Los Angeles. But they were really open to doing it.

Keanu, in retrospect, I think was sort of a bold choice in a way, because people think of a narrator as a much more commanding voice. But I liked the idea. He reminded me of Mifune in a way, more humble and not Mr. Big Hollywood Movie Star. One of the producers had worked as an interpreter for Keanu and could call him up. And he also knew and felt Keanu could handle the Japanese pronunciations well. Any great actor could do that, but we might not have the time to get the pronunciations right with [another] big name actor, and we hoped Keanu could do it, and he did a great job.

At the time of writing this piece, the film has already secured successful distribution deals in several European countries. Apart from the many-faceted appeal of Mifune and the intense desire to learn more about his rich life, what undoubtedly helped the film generate hype is the brief yet impactful appearance of such world-renowned figures as Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, not to mention the narration provided by Keanu Reeves who, nota bene, has found a rather unobtrusive way of pronouncing Japanese words and names.

Okazaki was impressed with Reeves’ work in the cinephile centric documentary Side By Side, and adding the actor to the project, coupled with receiving support from Mifune and director Akira Kurosawa’s families, were integral to the documentary’s creative success.

“There is just an everyman quality that Mifune had. Mifune didn’t have handlers or agents around him all the time and Keanu Reeves likewise doesn’t take himself too seriously,” said Okazaki, whose previous directing credits include Black Tar Heroin: the Dark End of the Street and Living on Tokyo Time. “He’s not protected by an entourage. He just rolls up to the sound recording place on his motorcycle and says, ‘Let’s get to work.’ I thought that would somehow fit. Luckily, we have been getting great responses to the narration.”