Sh\u014dgun,<\/em> \u201cCrimson Sky,\u201d she didn\u2019t feel especially emotional. \u201cI already knew the story, so it was more like, \u2018Okay, how are we going to shoot this?\u2019\u201d she recalls. \u201cI was just distancing myself and thinking about the technical stuff. That\u2019s how I had to do it, because otherwise I would have to carry those emotions for way too long.\u201d<\/p>\nIndeed, for the actor behind Sh\u014dgun<\/em>\u2019s tragic hero, Lady Mariko, everything came to a head only when cameras started rolling. Even more than a year after wrapping the series, the emotions didn\u2019t fall away: \u201cI\u2019d remember how I felt playing certain scenes, and I would just cry.\u201d<\/p>\nMariko dies at the end of \u201cCrimson Sky\u201d in an act of ultimate sacrifice. She puts herself on the front lines in Osaka, as part of her Lord Toranaga\u2019s grand plan to seize power and expose the deception of his rival, Ishido (Takehiro Hira<\/strong>). The previous episode ended with Mariko surprising Toranaga\u2019s men, including the captured English sailor (and her love interest) John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis<\/strong>) and the wishy-washy Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano<\/strong>), by joining them on their voyage to Osaka. This week\u2019s installment carefully, slowly reveals the true nature of her participation, beginning with a flashback to her traumatic family history and culminating in a double-cross by Yabushige that leaves Mariko with nowhere to turn.<\/p>\nYet Mariko is at peace with her fate. Sh\u014dgun<\/em> has explored the ripple effects of her principled father\u2019s (and, in turn, her family\u2019s) unjust death, and her desire to join him in the next life by committing seppuku (an honorable form of taking one\u2019s own life). Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada<\/strong>) knows this desire, and has offered her an exit plan that will serve him at the most pivotal moment in his fight. Mariko would go to Osaka, ostensibly in mourning for Toranaga\u2019s slain son, and reveal the brutal tyranny of Ishido\u2019s regime to her community in the process. This would change the course of the war between the two men, and thereby the course of Japan itself\u2014exactly what happened in the case of Hosokawa Gracia, the real-life inspiration for Mariko.<\/p>\n\u201cIt was a lot of mixed feelings for me because, in a way, that\u2019s what she wants,\u201d Sawai says of Mariko\u2019s fate. \u201cShe wants to serve her lord. She wants to fulfill her role. She\u2019s happy to do it. She doesn\u2019t want to just have an easy life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mariko\u2019s first big scene in \u201cCrimson Sky\u201d arrives when she tries to leave Osaka, with her own army surrounding her. She knows Ishido and his men will not let her go, but because, theoretically, she has been ordered<\/em> to leave at Toranaga\u2019s request, she goes forward anyway, as Ishido\u2019s guards attempt to stop her at every turn. Eventually, the guards fight back, and Mariko\u2019s men begin to fall in bloody succession. Her own samurai training\u2014which women of the era typically were forbidden from acting upon\u2014at last comes into play in a thrilling, harrowing fight scene.<\/p>\n\u201cJust experiencing that was so heartbreaking to me. I was not myself, I\u2019m just Mariko at this point,\u201d Sawai says. \u201cWe had a short scene that we shot after this fight, where Mariko goes and cries in the corner, and that\u2019s exactly how I was feeling. I had to be powerful in the moment, but you see all these people sacrificing their lives and dying in front of you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mariko survives, but announces that she will commit seppuku for her transgressions, even as Ishido faces mounting pressure to permit Mariko to leave as her lord instructs. In an agonizing sequence, we watch Mariko prepare to end her own life, with no one stepping up to second (or support, as the ritual dictates) the act. Her son is in attendance. So is Blackthorne, the man who has become her close friend and lover. Eventually, he steps up\u2014a symbol of his enduring affection for her, and an indication that after a full season of not understanding her attraction to death, he sees and respects what she values. The camera holds on Mariko as she slowly inches the sword toward her stomach, with Blackthorne behind her, until Ishido stops the proceedings at the last possible moment\u2014departure permits in hand. Mariko and Blackthorne gasp in shock. The audience does too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article contains spoilers about the ninth episode of Sh\u014dgun, \u201cCrimson Sky.\u201d When Anna Sawai first read the script for the ninth episode of Sh\u014dgun, \u201cCrimson Sky,\u201d she didn\u2019t feel especially emotional. \u201cI already knew the story, so it was more like, \u2018Okay, how are we going to shoot this?\u2019\u201d she recalls. \u201cI was just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":90699,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[27,7539,951,7538],"class_list":{"0":"post-90698","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrity","8":"tag-awards","9":"tag-fx","10":"tag-hulu","11":"tag-shogun"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}