Akira Kurosawa fits easily in the pantheon of preeminent directors of the century. His films have exerted unforeseen influences on post-WWII film. George Lucas used his 'Hidden Fortress' as a model for 'Star Wars"; Sergio Leone adapted his samurai tales to the spaghetti western; John Sturges transformed Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" into "The Magnificent Seven."
The Japanese-born director first gained fame in the West with "Rashoman," a brilliant excavation of truth and guilt. The film brought Kurosawa the top prize at the 1951 Venice Film Festival and an Oscar for best foreign film. Staged around a brutal rape and murder, the film follows the contrasting accounts of the incident given by four different characters. Brilliantly visualized (think contemplative shots of rainwater dripping from a temple roof), the film calls into question the fragility of narrative. It is an intense exercise in the self-reflexive nature of film. We expect the omniscient director to satisfy us, yet he cannot, as his unreliable characters alternately repress and accuse others.
"Seven Samurai" is perhaps Kurosawa's greatest achievement. Set during the sixteenth-century as Japan saw the decline of its once-powerful samurai, the film is a parable for the Japan of Kurosawa's own day. World War II had sapped Japan's world clout and the atomic bombings had left their haze of violence and shame. Turning to another transitional time in Japan's history, Kurosawa bridged the modern with the traditional -- "Seven Samurai" both addresses present pain and takes strength from an honorable past.
The film tells the story of a village that hires a group of samurai as protection against marauding attackers. The lost and wandering samurai, once the most lauded members of society, can now be hired for the price of a meal. By accepting the task, the seven samurai position themselves as models of Japanese honor and justice. For Kurosawa, the story is a longing for redemption, a fantasy of honorably martyred manhood. Epic in scope, "Seven Samurai" is an ode to humanism in the face of violence and degradation.
Despite the accolades he received, Kurosawa seemed bent on following the same martyred path seen so often in his films. Highly sensitive, the painter-turned-director unwillingly endured a long period of fallow and aborted projects. Proposed projects, like 'Tora! Tora! Tora!' and 'Runaway Train,' wilted for years on studio shelves before dying completely. When his "Dodeska-den"(1970) failed at the box office, he attempted suicide. It took his Academy Award-winning "Dersu Uzala" to exorcise his torment.
The creative exchange between Kurosawa and the West moved both ways. For "Ran," he applied "King Lear" to feudal Japan; he also made a startling adaptation of Dostoevsky's "The Idiot." One of his last films, "Dreams" (1990), explores the director's inner life as he repents the arrival of atomic war and the loss of nature. In one astonishing sequence, a wandering man meets Vincent van Gogh, played by American director Martin Scorsese. The scene is a two-way artistic tribute, a sense of silent homage paid on celluloid.
[show less]
