Amoeba Music

When a warlord dies, a peasant thief is called upon to impersonate him, and then finds himself haunted by the warlord’s spirit as well as his own ambitions. In his late color masterpiece Kagemusha, Akira Kurosawa returns to the samurai film and to a primary theme of his career—the play between illusion and reality. Sumptuously reconstructing the splendor of feudal Japan and the pageantry of war, Kurosawa creates a historical epic that is also a meditation on the nature of power.

Special Features:

• Audio commentary featuring Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince (author of The Warrior's Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa)
• “Lucas, Coppola, and Kurosawa”, in which directors George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola discuss Kurosawa and their roles as executive producers of 'Kagemusha'
• A 41-minute documentary on the making of Kagemusha, part of the Toho Masterworks series “Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create”
• “Image: Kurosawa's Continuity”, a new video piece that reconstructs Kagemusha through Kurosawa's paintings and sketches
• A series of Suntory Whiskey commercials made on the set of 'Kagemusha'
• A gallery of storyboards painted by Kurosawa and images of their realization on-screen
• Theatrical trailers and teasers
• A booklet featuring an essay by scholar Peter Grilli and an interview with Kurosawa by renowned critic Tony Rayns