47 Ronin|Neist Point — the westernmost cliff that plays a Japanese grave

The walk down to Neist Point begins with a flight of concrete steps and the rusted line of a winch that once hauled supplies to the lighthouse keepers. Take it into a westerly gale and you understand why the crew of 47 Ronin came here. This is the far western tip of Skye: basalt cliffs dropping into the Minch, the Outer Hebrides low on the horizon, grass cropped flat by wind and sheep.

In the film the headland stands in for the hillside in Japan where the forty-seven retainers are laid to rest — the closing beat, after the blades are set down, when the story stops being about revenge and turns into remembrance. The production arrived late. During the 2012 reshoots the editors found they had no landscape large enough for the journey the story required, and Skye had it: emptiness at a scale no set can fake, with digital peaks added afterwards to a skyline that scarcely needed the help.

Nothing here is dressed or signposted for film tourists. There is only the white tower the Stevenson engineers finished in 1909, still lit, and the great fin of An t-Aigeach rearing on your right. Minke whales and basking sharks pass below in summer. Stand at the fence above the drop as the sun goes into the sea, and the geography Hollywood borrowed for a samurai graveyard will feel exactly as final as the film wanted it to.

Photograph via Wikimedia Commons, freely licensed: "Isle of Skye - Neist Point Lighthouse at sunset (50666980882).jpg".