Tragic, challenging, intense and absolutely badass. Presenting "Harakiri"

I think this film is absolutely incredible. What helps is that I watched it during a movie slump, where it was like every film I watched was subpar.

And then I saw this on IMDb and a thought "Why not?". And what a film! Incredible.

Harakiri 's plot is as follows:

An elder ronin samurai arrives at a samurai clan's home and requests an honorable place to commit suicide. But when the ronin inquires about a younger samurai who arrived before him things take an unexpected turn.

Most of the film is a back and forth exchange between the shabby ronin and the samurai clan's leader, interceded by flashbacks when the ronin decides to tell the samurai a story of how he got to a point where he wanted to commit Harakiri.

I'll stop there, as it's best to go in blind.

But I can't stop heaving praise on this film. It works on so many different levels. It can be seen as a simple revenge film, a self-contained greek tragedy, a criticism of the Japanese governign body at the time that the film was made (which it was, apparently), an exploration of manliness, family values and questions just how far traditions should be valued when they directly cause unnecessary violence.

One thing that the film did that I loved was that it challenged you as the viewer - there are scenes where you (or me really, not sure if it was the same with anyone else) have a preconditioned prejudice against a character based on previous scenes without fully understanding their situation. And then when you do understand their situation you end up feeling extremely humbled and guilty. Never seen a film do this before.

I made a little spoiler-free (I talk about the first few scenes a bit, if you consider this a spoiler) here if you are interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYX5S-AUEjU

For those of you who have seen this film, what are your thoughts on it? And do you know of any other films that can challange their audiences like this one does?