I love how this movie naturally builds its scale up in pieces of scenes and sequences. At the end, as the thief stumbles around in the water, we understand so much of human nature and the basic simplicity of war and conflict, that it feels almost euphoric in its artistic finality. Kagemusha follows a lowly thief as he is forced to assume the throne for the purposes of war-time intimidation, and it traces over the lives of people in the royal courts of all three warring clans, leaving virtually no stone unturned in its storyline. We as the viewers get the sense of witnessing a human war without any authorial bias. The smartest person in the entire movie is a shy leader whose intellect is clear from his first scene. It runs almost like a season of The Wire in a way. Humans are forced into roles from which they do not run, but instead assume with complete dignity. The end result is a living breathing perfect film which does not let its obsession with painterly color drown out its artistic heart.