My mother was telling me about a Japanese movie that she saw a few months ago and really enjoyed, but couldn’t remember the title.
As she described it, the plot seemed pretty similar to Dave, only less of a comedy. A nobleman during the feudal era has fallen ill, and his family and retinue must keep it secret because his rivals will join forces and attack if they learn the land is without a leader. They find a commoner who’s an exact double for the lord, and enlist him to take his place. He’s more kind-hearted than the real lord, and eventually the family comes to prefer him.
She says it was a recent movie, and in color, so within the last twenty years, probably the last ten. It sounded at first like the kind of story Kurosawa might do, but nothing I saw on his imdb page matched this. Anyone know what it is?