Kagemusha

Kagemusha (影武者, 1980) is Akira Kurosawa's feudal war epic, free to watch online on iFILM. Sixteenth-century Japan is tearing itself apart over Kyoto. A petty thief is spared the death penalty for one reason alone: his face is the mirror image of the mighty warlord Takeda Shingen.

When Shingen falls to a sniper's bullet, his generals choose to bury the news for three years and seat the double on the lord's place instead. Tatsuya Nakadai plays both men — the formidable daimyo and the lowly thief forced to become his "shadow." At first it's torture: one wrong gesture, one slip of the voice, one careless moment near the dead man's wives or grandson could expose him. Bit by bit, though, the impostor sinks into the borrowed life until he forgets who he ever was. And the armies of Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu are already massing on the horizon.

Kurosawa made the film after years of unemployment and box-office failures; admirers George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola stepped in to help get it produced. It shared the Palme d'Or at Cannes and still astonishes with hand-built battle scenes where hundreds of riders move like a moving painting. This three-hour canvas rewards anyone willing to surrender to the slow, ceremonial rhythm of grand cinema. Stream Kagemusha (1980) online on iFILM.