Yojimbo- Trailer

The Quiet Duel-Trailer

An early film from Akira Kurosawa.

The Kyuzo Effect

Of all the samurai in Akira Kurosawa's great film, Seven Samurai, my favorite is Kyuzo, the master swordsman, played by one of his regular actors, Seiji Miyaguchi. He is the most skilled of the samurai, but also the leastegotistical and seldf-serving. In many ways, with my website, Cosmoetica, I know what it's like to be Kyuzo- overlooked, but the best at what you do, but also not really giving a damn what others think.

In my review, I describe the most telling scene in the film for the character:

Almost as good an acting job as Shimura’s is done by Ko Kimura as Katsushiro. Watch the scene where he confronts the great swordsman Kyuzo (Seiji Miyaguchi)- in yet another bravura performance that shows less is more, after Kyuzo has singlehandedly killed two bandits and returned with a needed gun. Katsushiro says little, save to tell his hero he is ‘great’. Kyuzo restrains a smile of satisfaction. Then, when Kyuzo is later killed by a gunshot, by a craven bandit hiding in a house during the rainstorm, look at the utter devastation on Kimura’s character’s face. Similarly, look at his reaction to killing a bandit- the first man he has ever killed, or even to some of the earlier shots that show him ruminating on the fact that a life as a samurai is not all glamour. Let a Mark Hamill try to act like that!

It's an interesting thing that the best of the samurai is the one who seeks the least glory. He persists for a higher purpose, one even his samurai mates do not understand. But that is part of what greatness is. It is persisting, despite the naysayers, despite even friends and family not truly getting what the reasons are, or why they are right.

This sort of demeanor is exacerbated by the fact that there are many delusional people, with no talent, who boast of their skills in assorted fields, and delude themselves, and often a few others (see Bukowski, Charles), into thinking they are great, merely because they get celebrity, for some reason.

But, often the really great people get the most nasty harassers and foes. This is because there is something in the makeup of the average that fears and hates greatness, for it highlights their own failings, even to themselves. But, like Kyuzo, the truly great do not care, which only enrages their detractors further.

Early in the film, when Kyuzo makes his introduction, he is in a fake swordfight with a bad swordsman. The lesser man declares their fight a draw, while Kyuzo states that if the blades were real, he'd be dead. The loser persists in antagonizing Kyuzo until he is forced to kill him. Similarly, I get hundreds of email threats and harassment every month, and do not reply to any, save for occasional essays that highlight the silliest of them. Again, this only makes the harassers persist.

But, the Kyuzo in me will persist longer. Only the new technology of guns can bring him down, and only the inevitability of death will do me in, but, there, the game is rigged. Excelsior!

Kurosawa Documentary (6)

Kurosawa Documentary (5)

Kurosawa Documentary (4)

Kurosawa Documentary (3)

Kurosawa Documentary (2)

Kurosawa Documentary (1)

Kurosawa's Ran

Watched this classic last night. Don't think it's a great film, and is about on par with the other late epic he made, Kagemusha.

Both are too long, but Ran lacks the excellent characterizations and historical fidelity of Kagemusha.

The trailer:


Ran never plumbs within the human psyche the way Seven Samurai, Ikiru, or The Bad Sleep Well do.


- The funniest bloopers are right here

Throne Of Blood

This is cool. One of Kurosawa's whole feature length films is free online. Throne Of Blood isn't great, but second rate Kurosawa is still cool.

Read my review before or after the film and compare thoughts.

Kurosawa Online Documentary

A brief online film:


Ignore the mispronunciation of Venice, as Veneese!

Akira Kurosawa's Short Film 'Crows'

From his anthology film Dreams:

Ran

One of my big regrets is that I never have enough time to see all the films I'd love to, nor read all the poems and books I'd love to.

While the last few years of foreign film watching have greatly edified my life there are still some classics that elude me.

Such as Akira Kurosawa's Ran:



Some tell me it's overrated in comparison to earlier black and white classics he made, but, having seen Kagemusha, and knowing that's a damned good film, and knowing most Kurosawans believe Ran is superior, I gotta watch it soon.

More Endings

Akira Kurosawa's High And Low is another of his films that really stretches form, but it all aids in the denouement.

As I wrote:

Filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer once opined about mood defining a story. He stated: ‘Imagine we are sitting in an ordinary room. Suddenly we are told that there is a corpse behind the door. In an instant, the room we are sitting in is completely altered: everything in it has taken on another level; the light, the atmosphere have changed, though they are physically the same. This is because we have changed.…This is the effect I want to get.’ Alfred Hitchcock used this ploy in one of his best films, Rope, whose entirety is sort of an inverse of this film’s first 55 minutes, while Kurosawa follows a parallel track in regards to character. What changes in the scene on the train is not a willful manipulation of a character, by a screenwriter, but an organic and believable flowering into character, due to circumstances that are not contrived. Instead of knowing of a corpse behind the door, the audience’s first hour has let us become that corpse- or thing, with knowledge of itself. In essence, we know what Gondo will do because his character has been so skillfully revealed, despite many seeming moments that paint him as something other than his true self. That the remainder of the film shows a more complacent Gondo (check out the scene where he whistles as he mows his own lawn) is, thus, not in the least implausible, for it is the logical outcome of all that has gone before.

This is one of the cardinal rules of quality fiction (in any genre) that is always violated by the Dumbest Possible Action and the us of dei ex machina. Kurosawa, in this film, shows that by following logic and rules, one can still totally leave a percipient engaged and questioning his experience.

That's why he's a great artist.

More Kurosawa

Above is a clip from Akira Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well. It is one of the great filmmaker's best films.

Oddly, although he is more well known for his period piece costume dramas, I think the master was better in films like this, Ikiru, and High And Low- all drama set in then Modern Japan.

In my review of the film I wrote:

The film does a wonderful job of showing the utter corruption that is inevitable with the eternal corporate mindset that slacks off public responsibility for mere profit, and the particularly Japanese obsession with falling on the sword, so to speak, for one’s superiors. Wada says, ‘You don’t understand bureaucrats. A good official never implicates a superior, no matter what the cost.’ He later tells Nishi, ‘You’re up against a terrifying system that will never yield,’ to which Nishi replies, ‘Everyone feels that way and gives up. That’s how they get away with it.’ But, ultimately, it is the long kowed Wada who is correct. The saddest thing is the corruption this film details is so minor league today that it seems almost childish compared to Enron, Worldcom, and the many others in the years since. In a sense, Iwabuchi isn’t even the top criminal in the film. That would belong to the corporation’s little seen President, Arimura (Ken Mitsuda), who, late in the film, when things seem to be going against the corporation, even sends over a vial of poison for Iwabuchi to do himself in, in case things don’t go well. Ever the corporate toady, Iwabuchi nor only thanks his superior for the vial, but for even telling him the correct dosage needed for death. Watching this film, far more than any of the period pieces put out, explains exactly how the militarists that arose in the early Twentieth Century were so easily able to lead their country down the path to near oblivion.

Yet, while being a cogent film on the tenor of then Modern Japan, it is also a damned good thriller, something even the brain dead fare of today cannot match. It also puts Hitchcock to shame.

Rashomon's Ending

Is this the worst ending to a great film ever?



Then the rain ends and the sun breaks out.

Yuck!

Double yuck, especially coming from the great Kurosawa.

Ikiru

Enough with the good schlock, back to serious cinema. Ikiru is a masterful film by Akira Kurosawa.

Many film critics argue that Kurosawa's greatest films were his historical epics. While I've only watched about a third of the man's output, and while Rashomon, Seven Samurai, and Kagemusha are certainly terrific films, Ikiru, The Bad Sleep Well, and High And Low, are even better.

The reason is that Kurosawa understood modern man better. Sometimes, even in his greatest historical films, characters would lapse into stereotypes, such as the hero, the villain, the anti-hero, and not converse nor relate to each other easily and naturally. That has never been a problem in the films I've seen of his set in 20th Century Japan.

Here is a trailer for Ikiru:

The Bad Sleep Well

Rewatched The Bad Sleep Well, by Akira Kurosawa, and it's better than I originally thought.

Here is the trailer:



The ending is absolutely killer- realistic and terrifying. As much as Kurosawa is lauded for Rashomon, Seven Samurai, and other historical epics, he's even better in his modern day classics, like this, Ikiru, and High And Low.

He may also be the most diverse great director of all time.