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The Films of Akira Kurosawa

Sugata Sanshirô

The Most Beautiful

Zoku Sugata Sanshirô

The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail

No Regrets for Our Youth

One Wonderful Sunday

Drunken Angel

The Quiet Duel

Stray Dog

Scandal

Rashomon (March 4/18)

Directed by Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon details the aftermath of a heinous crime from the perspective of four vastly different figures - including the victim's wife and a notorious bandit (Toshiro Mifune's Tajōmaru). Filmmaker Kurosawa, working from a script cowritten with Shinobu Hashimoto, delivers an erratic narrative that remains oddly uninvolving from start to finish, ultimately, with the movie's less-than-engrossing atmosphere compounded by an egregiously deliberate pace and an almost total lack of interesting, three-dimensional characters. (The latter ensures that the movie's cast is left floundering within figures that aren't developed beyond their most outward attributes.) It's apparent, to an increasingly prominent and problematic degree, that Rashomon's far-from-engrossing mystery plays a pivotal role in its inability to capture the viewer's attention, and there's little doubt that the film's undeniably groundbreaking structure remains far more compelling and intriguing than its actual content. The ensuing hit-and-miss atmosphere, which is often more miss than hit, paves the way for a midsection that grows less and less engaging as time progresses, with the film building towards a decidedly ineffective climactic stretch that's as underwhelming as it is ludicrous. It is, in the end, impossible to label Rashomon as anything more than an antiquated relic of its time, as the movie, its aforementioned innovative structure notwithstanding, is overtly devoid of entertaining, engrossing elements and generally comes off as a fairly interminable cinematic experience.

out of

The Idiot

Ikiru

Seven Samurai (July 31/08)

There's little doubt that Seven Samurai suffers from an absurdly overlong running time that often threatens to negate its more overtly positive attributes, as screenwriters Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, and Hideo Oguni have ungainly foisted an epic framework onto an admittedly slight story. The movie, which follows several samurai warriors as they come together to save a small village from blood-thirsty bandits, consequently suffers from an almost unbearably uneven quality that pervades from start to finish, although it's certainly impossible to entirely discount the effectiveness of Kurosawa's masterful directorial choices and the almost uniformly memorable performances (Takashi Shimura, as the reluctant leader of the fighters, is particularly good here). There's little doubt that Seven Samurai's almost brutally monotonous midsection proves to be its most problematic stretch, as Kurosawa spends an egregious amount of time dwelling on the title characters' preparations for the inevitable conflict. It goes without saying that one's ability to muster up enthusiasm for the ensuing battles is somewhat diminished as a result, yet there's admittedly no denying the effectiveness of the climactic (and rain-soaked) confrontation between the surviving heroes and villains. And while the film's contribution to the action genre remains as clear as ever - ie it's not a stretch to call this the template for the majority of similarly-themed efforts that have followed over the years - Seven Samurai is ultimately unable to live up to its reputation as a flawlessly conceived and executed piece of work.

out of

I Live in Fear

Throne of Blood

The Lower Depths

The Hidden Fortress

The Bad Sleep Well

Yojimbo

Sanjuro

High and Low

Red Beard

Dodesukaden

Dersu Uzala

Kagemusha

Ran

Dreams

Rhapsody in August

Madadayo

© David Nusair