The Three Treasures (1959)

It’s quite a coincidence that I spent time this week finally watching Poor Things, a Frankenstein-like work, and then made room in my viewing schedule for this, a film essentially about gods and monsters. The Three Treasures has some of the former, one of the latter, and a lengthy runtime that allows the director to give due respect to a creation myth that shows Japan being formed.

The great Toshirô Mifune is the lead here, an individual named Prince Osu who will soon become Prince Yamato Takeru. As Osu, he embarks on a deadly quest. As Takeru, he starts to evolve as he finds out more context about his place in the world, whether of his own doing or at the hands of others.

I am not going to lie. I watched this because it was on the list of kaiju movies I am currently using as a main reference point for my 2024 journey through the films of Godzilla and co. It wasn’t long until I realised that this was quite different to the other films I have been watching recently. This isn’t a monster movie. It is a classic tale, a hero’s journey that also includes a memorable encounter with a creature that is very close in design to the Hydra (although it “only” has eight heads, and is known as Yamata no Orichi). That creature is well-realised, Harryhausen-like in feel and execution, but it is one very small moment in a film that is more concerned with fate, selflessness, love, and fighting for your place in history.

Written by Ryûzô Kikushima and Toshio Yasumi, who both have MANY films worth exploring, this is an enjoyably overblown bit of melodrama, almost an entire film seemingly designed to celebrate the gods responsible for creating Japan, but it’s also a film that just reaches a bit too far. I never felt truly invested in the story, and I didn’t care for any of the characters, although I would remain interested in Toshirô Mifune simply due to him being Toshirô Mifune.

Director Hiroshi Inagaki looks to have made a nice little career out of churning out historical dramas for a decade or so, and there is clearly a good use of resources here to show every main set-piece, but the end result here doesn’t feel like the best work from anyone involved. Maybe, and it is a big maybe, a rewatch would be beneficial. Maybe watching it in a better presentation would help (this was hard to track down, but is tucked away on the Internet Archive). Sadly, all I have to go on is this particular experience, and it was lacking something special.

Mifune is wonderful though, and I will also mention the likes of Yôko Tsukasa, Kyôko Kagawa, Akihiko Hirata, Takashi Shimura, and Setsuko Hara, and there are many more excellent performers in the stuffed cast, but very few get to make much of an impression amidst this sprawling tale of tales.

Certainly not terrible, and rarely dull, this just wasn’t as good as other historical epics I could suggest. And I’ll admit it, I was hoping for more screentime for that multi-headed snake monster, dammit.

5/10

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