Copycat

I watched Yojimbo by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa to know that A Fistful of Dollars was nothing but a copycat, including the storyline, the characters and structure. It's a poor imitation: the strength was lost, the tension was watered down, and the deep understanding of Zen is abolished. Only the beauty of Clint Eastwood is, though, original.

When writing this, again, I can't get rid of the image of a cat in "copycat". In Chinese expression, a copycat is a dog-- "畫虎不成反類犬"-- intending to copy a tiger but it turns out to resemble a dog.

I do remember a dog in Yojimbo. After the concise but powerful opening, the samurai reached the outskirt of the town. The villagers offered him water but slashed their anger about the chaotic situation on the samurai: "Dogs come along for they smell blood!" When the samurai entered the town, an innocent-looking white dog passed by with a human hand in his mouth. Humor like this is what the copycat A Fistful of Dollars fails to copy.

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