Sansho the Bailiff(山椒大夫)

Variety by

Legend, adventure and poetry fuse to make this engrossing, if overlong, film material.

Slant Magazine by Chuck Bowen

There’s a reason Sansho the Bailiff is often greeted by critics and audiences with something akin to rapture: It’s a work that divorces the existential riddles of faith from regimented dogma, favoring instead the practical challenges, contradictions, and ambiguities of life as it’s often lived.

Chicago Reader by Dave Kehr

This is one of the greats, and I’m too much in awe of it to say much more than: See it—as often as you can.

Empire by David Parkinson

Moving and atmospheric, this quest tale is among the best of its kind.

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

It employs the power of tragedy to enrich.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

At some point during the watching, "Sansho the Bailiff" stops being a fable or a narrative and starts being a lament, and by that time it is happening to us as few films do.

The A.V. Club by Scott Tobias

Told with the stark simplicity of a fairy tale, Sansho The Bailiff demonstrates how compassion can overcome the forces of hatred and oppression, and shows how trying it is to remain decent and humane in an inhospitable world.