[In Kagemusha the] screen is awash with one brilliant canvas after another, and all the Kurosawa obsessions are present, too: the stormy, psychological expressionism, the inner torment, the lordly absolution of mere mortals from their indecision. Drawn toward the tapestry of the Shakespearian chronicle plays and the Fordian cavalry westerns, Kurosawa dazzles the viewer's eye even when he is disorienting the viewer's sense of the plot….

The central plot concerns a legendary leader who conceals his "double" until after his death so that the clan can survive without its enemies becoming aware of his passing…. I must confess that at one point in Kagemusha I thought that Kurosawa was priming himself to attain a Mizoguchian nobility. It is the scene in which the double unexpectedly provides an uncanny imitation of the leader. But I should have known better. Had I not written years ago that Mizoguchi was to...