Buddha is a 1961 film from Japan directed by Kenji Misumi.
It is a story of the life of Siddhartha Gautama
, also known as the Buddha. Since little is known of the facts of the life of Gautama, any biopic about him has a great deal of Artistic License. In this version Gautama is born as a prince in a royal house in northern India. Grudgingly, he enters a contest of skill for the hand of a princess named Yashodara, defeating a rival prince named Devadatta.
Six years pass. The marriage of Gautama and Yashodara remains childless, much to her disappointment and the frustration of his father, the king. Gautama takes tours of his family's kingdom and is disturbed by the human misery and suffering that he sees—sickness, starvation, appalling human sacrifice rituals. He decides that he must leave his family and his wife and become a monk, so that he may meditate and find the cause of human suffering.
Cue the return of the dastardly Devadatta, who attempts to win Yashodara back now that she has been abandoned by her husband. Yashodara rejects him, saying that she will be Gautama's forever even if he never returns. Meanwhile Gautama, meditating in the forest, eventually achieves complete enlightenment, realizing that attachment to material things is the cause of suffering, and that evil must only be replaced by love. He becomes the Buddha.
The Buddha begins his ministry, sometimes going out among the people to spread his doctrine of enlightenment, but also receiving pilgrims in his forest glade. Back at the palace Devadatta returns and rapes Yashodara, followed by her suicide. He becomes an implacable enemy of the Buddha and Buddhism, vowing to destroy the Buddha and his new religion.
This film was a big-budget affair featuring most all of the stars of the Daiei studio. Machiko Kyo appears briefly as Nandabala, the milkmaid who gives a pail of milk to Gautama and is the first to proclaim him the Buddha.
Other than the common subject, no relation to the manga, Buddha.
Tropes:
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: The film ends with the Buddha achieving nirvana, that is, dying and ascending to heaven amidst an honor guard of heavenly spirits.
- As You Know: Someone tells Prince Kanala's fiancée that he has been banished to Gonga. She says "Gonga? Isn't that where the slaves and common criminals are kept?"
- Beautiful Slave Girl: A monk named Ananda, on pilgrimage, asks for water from a beautiful slave girl named Auttami. When she says that slave girls like her aren't supposed to talk to monks, he replies that under the doctrine of Buddhism all are equal. She promptly falls in love with him, much to his discomfort.
- Blind Musician: Prince Kanala takes to playing a harp after his mother orders his eyes put out.
- Cape Swish: Devadatta theatrically swishes his red cape and vows revenge, after the king ejects him following his rape of Yashodara and her suicide.
- Cruel Elephants: Prince Andusatu uses elephants to execute Buddhist monks, by having the elephants step on the monks and crush them. When Ananda says he is unafraid to die and willing to die for the Buddha, he suddenly becomes invulnerable, as an invisible shield protects him from the elephant.
- Desert Skull: The barrenness of the country where Gautama wanders as a monk is demonstrated by a whole horse's skeleton, lying on the ground.
- Driven to Suicide:
- Princess Yashodara plunges a knife into her heart after she is raped by Devadatta.
- Queen Yashikara jumps off the walls of the castle after she is exposed as the person who ordered her son's eyes to be burned out.
- Eats Babies: A woman named Yasha, a loving mother to eight children, also feeds herself by going out into her village, kidnapping babies, eating them, and throwing them in the river. (Tragically, Burger King was still 2500 years into the future.). The Buddha shows her the error of her ways by taking her baby. When she comes to him in a panic and demands the return of her child, Buddha says to her that she must love other babies as much as she loves her own. Thereafter, Yasha stops baby-eating.
- Engagement Challenge: A whole bunch of princes from different kingdoms arrive to compete for the hand of the gorgeous Princess Yashodara. Devadatta would have won, but Yashodara is sweet on Gautama so she insists that he participate. Gautama defeats Devadatta and wins the princess, although he doesn't seem very enthusiastic about it.
- Epic Movie: A 2 1/2 hour epic about the life of the Buddha, featuring every star at the Daiei studio, huge elaborate sets, elephants, the proverbial cast of thousands. It was the first film in Japan to be made in 70mm.
- Evil Is Petty: Devadatta seems strangely interested in one particular monk, Ananda. He casts a magic spell so Ananda will violate his vow of chastity and have sex with the beautiful slave girl Auttami. The arrival of the Buddha and his words break the spell and Ananda leaves Auttami's bed. After this Devadatta starts thinking bigger, corrupting a prince so that he might use the prince's power to crush Buddhism.
- Eye Scream: Not content to leave her son a slave working on a chain gang after he rejects her attempt to have sex with him, Queen Yashikara orders his eyes put out. Her new lover burns out Prince Kanala's eyes with a red-hot poker.
- The Faceless: Sort of. We actually see quite a bit of actor Kojiro Hongo as he plays Siddhartha Gautama, Indian prince. But once he achieves enlightenment and becomes the Buddha, he is only seen from behind or from a great distance.
- Fanservice: A very daring scene for 1961 Japanese cinema. A sequence which symbolizes the temptations of the flesh shows a woman dancing in front of Gautama, with her breasts very visible through a gauzy see-through top. He rejects her, and soon after achieves enlightenment.
- Human Sacrifice: A shocked Gautama witnesses a religious rite in which priests hurl unwilling victims into the flames as sacrifices to the gods. This is the final straw that makes him decide that humans must find their own way to make happiness, and that he must become a monk to find what that happiness is.
- Leaving You to Find Myself: More like "leaving you to find enlightenment for the whole human race." Yashodara is heartbroken when her husband leaves her to become a monk.
- Parental Incest: An attempt at parental incest, anyway. A prince named Kanala is jumped on and nearly raped by his own mother, Queen Yashikara, who tells him that she's still young and horny and the king is no longer fulfilling her needs. After he rejects her, she takes a terrible revenge.
- Race Lift: A whole cast of Japanese actors playing Indians.
- Rape Discretion Shot: The film cuts away as Yashodara struggles in Devadatta's arms after he has tricked his way into her bedroom.
- Sexless Marriage: It isn't directly stated, but we are told that after six years Gautama and Yashodara have not had children, and Gautama's father asks him directly if he doesn't have affection for his wife.
- Slouch of Villainy: Devadatta slouches on a couch in Yashodara's suite and munches on a fruit, as he tells her that she should give up on Gautama and be his wife, now that she has been abandoned. She rejects him again.
- Sword and Sandal: This was Daiei's effort to make a big-scale historical epic to rival the sword-and-sandal epics being made in Hollywood like Ben-Hur and Spartacus. It's the life of the Buddha rather than a Roman Empire or Jesus movie, but the sweeping scope of grand history as enacted by a cast of thousands is the same.
- Thrown Down a Well: Prince Andusatu, convinced that his parents tried to murder him as a child, imprisons his father King Dimdusaru in an oubliette. He expects his father to starve to death, but the queen keeps the king alive by smearing her own body with honey, so Dimdusaru can presumably lick it off when she visits him in his cell.
- Time Lapse: This effect is used to show all the flowers blooming at once in the palace garden upon the birth of the prince Gautama.
- Working on the Chain Gang: Kanala is sentenced to be a slave working on a chain gang in a quarry after his mother lies and says he tried to rape her. Soon things get even worse.
