The Last Samurai

I watched “The Last Samurai” with a terrific group of people last weekend. This was my second time watching the movie, but the first time was 3 years, 2 months, and 28 days ago so I didn’t remember much of the plot. It’s a long and pretty emotionally powerful movie. I’d recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it before. One part in particular caught me as I watched it this time. (I couldn’t figure out how to tell this without giving some spoilers. Sorry.)

The story takes place in Japan in the 1870s. Nathan Algren is an American captain who has extensive experience subduing rebellions among Native Americans in the American west. Katsumoto is the leader of a Samurai rebellion fighting against the westernization of the Japanese empire. Algren has been hired to work with the Japanese empire to apply the same principles he learned from the Native Americans to surpass this native Japanese rebellion too. Before long though, he finds himself caught and cared for by his enemy, Katsumoto.

Over time, Algren embraces the lifestyle and code of honor of the samurai and chooses to switch allegiance and fight with Katsumoto against the westernized Japanese army. In one final, glorious charge, the samurai are mowed down by two twin machine guns. Katsumoto is fatally wounded, but wants to die with his honor intact, so Algren helps him fall on his own sword. As he is dying in Algren’s arms, he says something like, “They’re all perfect” while looking at blossoms blow off a tree in the wind.

It was a reference to an earlier conversation that Katsumoto had with Algren while Algren was his prisoner. My memory is fading on the specifics, but in the earlier scene Algren had approached Katsumoto with a specific question. Katsumoto ignored him and started talking about a poem and the blossoms on a tree. He said something like, “You could spend your whole life looking for the perfect blossom, and it wouldn’t be a wasted life.”

These two scenes convey the truth that somehow in the end everything is perfect. It would take an entire lifetime to define and explore the far reaches of perfection, but in the end everything holds its own perfection. Maybe everything has a part of perfection or a touch of perfection or contains a glimpse of perfection.

I agree. I take a slightly more spiritual angle though to explain it. If there is a wholly perfect God then God cannot use anything that isn’t perfect. Therefore, I define perfection as anything that can be used by God for God’s purposes, which is everything because all things are redeemable. Perfection has less to do with humanly definable characteristics and more to do with “divine potential” or whatever term you want to use. No matter the past, nothing is completely useless to God, so everything has the potential of a perfect future. No matter what disastrous past may have occurred, the future, through God’s mercy and grace, has unlimited potential for good. Therefore in its own unknown way, everything thing is perfect looking forward.

With human eyes we cannot see the perfect potential of anything and we get caught up on superficial judgments of all that we see. We would spend a lifetime looking for our own definition of perfect, but through God’s eyes all things are already perfect, whether it is a flower blossom or a human being.

Take that, world!

A little glimpse into my life:

Several years ago (Sunday, May 27, 2007 to be exact) I was sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast before church. That time would have been incomplete and likely unsatisfactory without some ridiculously good reading material known to most as the Sunday comics. I've always enjoyed reading the comics, especially on Sundays, but there are few strips (if any) I enjoy more than Baby Blues. I can't pinpoint exactly what I appreciated about it, but if I was running late for church I'd still make sure to read that one.

Well, on that Sunday morning before church in May as I was eating breakfast and reading the comics I decided to cut out the Baby Blues strip. I still have it. It hung in my room at home and then in several dorm rooms at college. It's not currently hanging anywhere and is just sitting in a box, but I know exactly where it is. I was thinking of that strip today and I hope more and more that my life can emulate what it portrays.

I can't figure out how to get the picture any larger (if you click on it it'll get a little bigger), but here it is. Better yet, follow this link and enjoy more Baby Blues brilliance! Just don't waste your whole day that way.










You can barely tell, but Daryl's eyes are looking up in the last frame. Without that detail this strip doesn't quite do it for me.

Enjoy your day!