Sumodo - The Successors of Samurai
A rare insight into the behind the scenes and personal lives of modern sumo wrestlers, Sumodo -The Successors of Samurai- shows us some of the real people engaged in the fierce yet exhilarating sport.
The documentary, a first for director Sakata Eiji, is one in essentially two halves. It makes the decision to follow two sumo wrestlers, or rikishi, gradually painting a portrait of the people they are both inside and outside the ring. The two in question are Goeido Gotaro (now recently retired from competition) and Ryuden Goshi. Sumodo paints a portrait of each man, as an athlete, as a role model and as a human being, giving viewers a glimpse at the reality behind the powerful, hulking bodies and their often stoic exteriors.
The strength of the film is its interviewing of not just Goeido and Ryuden, but their stablemates and stable masters (in sumo wrestling, the wrestlers live and train in groups in heya, or stables in English). We are treated to the personalities, but also philosophies of the two main focuses, but are also granted a window into the perspectives of their contemporaries and competitors, as well as those responsible for training them. This would be the main drawcard for any fans of the sport, and is fascinating all the same for non-fans. Also a significant attraction is the generous use of training and competition footage which goes a long way to underscore the content of the interviews and is otherwise itself engrossing viewing.
Going into Sumodo, however, it is important to be aware that the documentary is constructed largely for the initiated. Whilst there are some instances where the sport’s history is summarised or certain rules and concepts are explained, these moments are rather sparse. For the most part, there is a level of assumed knowledge which can leave those unfamiliar with sumo in the dark at times. This is not necessarily a weakness, but it is an important creative choice as to the intended audience and will influence what an individual viewer can gain from watching.
A criticism that does need to be made, however, is the inconsistency in style and presentation of the film. The aforementioned sparse explanations throughout are made conspicuous by the fact that they appear to be included as a hand wave to those unfamiliar but aren’t taken far enough or used regularly enough to justify their initial inclusion. Other elements are also seemingly used in a seemingly tokenistic way. Slow motion editing is used often, but in many cases feels unnecessary or arbitrary. A historian who appears at the start of the documentary to give a short historical background to sumo shows up later in the feature once to comment on something completely different and then is never seen again. Animated graphics are used twice and whilst they are of reasonable quality themselves, there doesn’t appear to be much of a rhyme or reason for having used them at all if they were to be so infrequent and seemingly random.
These individual issues themselves are small, but together they create an impression of an unfocussed work, which can be distracting. Ultimately, however, this should not downplay the strength of the content, even if it can come across at times in a slightly muddled way.
