Tragicomic road movie set during the Edo period. It follows a samurai, his two servants – including spear-carrier Genpachi – and the various people they meet on their journey, including a policeman in pursuit of a thief, a young child and a woman who is to be sold into prostitution.
A Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji, Chiyari Fuji, A Bloody Spear on Mount Fuji, Кровавая пика Фудзи, Le Mont Fuji et la lance ensanglantée, Окровавленное копьё на горе Фудзи, Una lanza ensangrentada en el Monte Fuji, 血枪富士, A Lança Ensanguentada, სისხლიანი შუბი ფუჯის მთაზე, 후지산의 혈창
Russia 
Japan Japan Russia
A fake reward for a fake spear. There’s lots to be learned on the road, but much more to be lost. One of the great films with such a great control of its many moods shifting from comedy, melodrama, adventure and shocking violence. I’ve seen it compared to Stagecoach many times, but while there’s similarities, Ford was building while tearing down and there’s nothing getting constructed by Uchida, but plenty falling apart. There’s a mix of character work detour with pure forward momentum movies don’t manage quite often.
A Bloody Spear on Mount Fuji has a catchy, distinctive name which is surprisingly the least interesting part of the film after all. The film itself could hardly be defined by a single genre. At once it could be a road movie (like Stagecoach but without a confined transportation), a samurai movie (warning: the “spear verse swords” fight comes at the very end of the film, and like Seven Samurai it’s not your expected uplifting triumph), a criticism on the hierarchical, oppressive society (like Mizoguchi or Naruse films, woman, or should I say girl, is sold for debt/money), a statement of anti-establishment (in sync with the spirit of Masaki Kobayashi), and a social satire that finds joy in absurdity. Tomu…
A comical riff on Stagecoach presents a samurai film all about conflict avoidance until its noble servant, who spends the entire film seeking to keep his master on the straight and narrow and growing closer to the coterie with whom they travel until catastrophe rips the lid off of the brutality he was always capable of. But even in the lighter first two-thirds, there are signs of miseries as historical as current. Storm clouds gathering ominously over Mount Fuji come to resemble a mushroom cloud, and in the demeaning ways that the peasants of the travelers get by (sex slavery, the man who worked himself half to death to buy the freedom of a daughter who is already dead) are…
Tomu Uchida was a contemporary of Ozu, Mizoguchi and was also greatly ired by Kurosawa, though for various reasons including a sporadic and varied output with no signature style per se, his name is virtually unheard of in the west, which is a real shame because just going off the strength of this film alone I'd be included to agree he is equally as worthy.
Despite the enticing title and misleading poster this is no violent samurai flick—at least not until the very end, but rather a phlegmatic humanist Jidaigeki come road movie that starts off very lighthearted and maintains an unrushed pace with thoughtful character drama and tragicomic humour throughout, until the cruel finale snatches away the hope that…
Striking little anti-Samurai Samurai film, from Tomu Uchida (with special thanks to Mr. Ozu!?!?) that starts out like a realist drama and ends in an explosion of chaotic violence. Efficient, vivid movie-making.
Based on the cool title and poster art, I sat down expecting a tale of stylish swordplay—but, instead, I got something that’s probably closer to what samurai combat really was like: rare, messy, accidental, the swords worthless pieces of junk, the combatants drunk, or distraught, or foolishly clinging to rigid codes of masculinity, often resulting in early graves, and a heavy burden of guilt, sorrow and trauma for the few survivors. Indeed, up until the lone, heart-wrenching fight at the end, the film is so much more interested in its non-samurai characters, as if to remind us that most people weren’t samurai, and that samurai don’t deserve the pedestal cinema gave them. So—one of those films that might make you…
The aspect of Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji that stands out the most to me is its lack of hero worship towards the samurai lifestyle. The film is staunchly anti-violence, painting bloodshed as the source of nothing but tragedy. It goes to very dark places and does so effectively and without completely abandoning the lighter tone of its beginning. Tomu Uchida's film only gets better as it goes along. It wears the influence of the western genre on its sleeves, borrowing elements from Stagecoach and putting them to good use.
C'est pas tous les jours qu'un film arrive à faire le grand écart entre une finale aussi tragique et autant de farces d'enfant qui a la diarrhée. Mais Tomu Uchida est ce rare auteur, capable d'un tel exploit.
This is the most un-samurai samurai film I have ever seen. This is a road trip movie that follows a group of people traveling the Japanese countryside in the shadow of the titular Mount Fuji. Highlights include a roadside tea ceremony and a kid with explosive diarrhea, not the usual samurai fare to be sure. This lives up to it's tragicomic descriptor at the end. The kids completely steal the movie in this one, but the entire cast enlivens this one.
There's a credit for "Advisor to the Production" for Yasujiro Ozu. And there's an Ozu-ish tinge to the film's focus on human connection: the capacity of strangers to form gentle, intimate, generous bonds. The weave of the Japanese social fabric -- it is caressed and ired.
Like Altman's Nashville, there's no single protagonist, just a world with people in it, who come and go.
An unusual film, at times almost magical. But, stars docked for not ending 15 minutes earlier: the bold heroism of the finale seems out-of-place in a film that's more about quiet everyday heroism.
Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji spends much of its runtime as a shaggy road movie about a samurai and his two servants wandering the countryside. Plot fades into the background as the camera simply documents the vicissitudes of ordinary life in Tokugawa Japan. Our heroes pick up a samurai-worshiping orphan, get drawn into the investigation of a notorious thief, and bear witness of the sale of an impoverished woman to a brothel. These incidents are serious, but the tone of the film remains light and relaxed. Poo makes multiple appearances. But the conclusion is an absolute punch to the gut. Our journey culminates with an incisive critique of the injustices that underlie social hierarchies, as well as of the hypocrisies that sustain them. And as a testament to the screenwriters and Tomu Uchida's direction, it also reframes nearly everything that's come before.
I don’t know how much far of a stretch would be to call it this wonderful Tomu Uchida’s film as a anti-samurai film, or at least is the most “anti” of everything one might know or recognize as a Jidaigeki period piece Chambara Samurai film as it leaves all its real Samurai violence traits and even the thematic moral drama discussions of its "genre"'s traces to the very end final minutes of the film, leaving the rest up until them to be focused on constructing what it reveals to be rather a sweet light-hearted character drama about the most humanistic and unpretentious themes you can think off.
In that you can rightfully say that Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji follows…
