cursedby11 wrote:Did you know Akira Kurosawa was a marxist? This is evident in Seven Samurai.

Yea I picked up on that pretty hardcore.

I've seen, Yojimbo, Throne Of Blood, The Hidden Fortress and Seven Samurai. Gotta see the rest of these eventually.

High & Low is one of my favorite movies. The last scene is fucking raw. Kingo's moral dilemma is handled startlingly well, and it is depressing to note that if Kingu allowed the boy to die he wouldn't have just saved his family life, he would have prevented the deaths of the addicts, the prostitute/runner from being left to die as an "experiment", and kept the factory as a fair place to work. The "hat" metaphor for idleness and waste is cool (the meeting at the beginning, the addicts picking up the suitcases at the rail line). I won't ever get sick of this movie.

I admit, Ikiru made me cry. Sanjuro made me laugh almost as much.

big_dave wrote:I admit, Ikiru made me cry.

Ikiru is a great movie. In my opinion it's one of the best black comedies ever created.

Also, the camera always seems like it's on the ground/floor in this film. I know Japanese people are short but Jesus. It's really noticeable, at least to me. And it's one of the cool, unique things about this movie, from a photographic standpoint.

same wrote:

big_dave wrote:I admit, Ikiru made me cry.

In my opinion it's one of the best black comedies ever created.

The "punchline" is pretty savage. In fact, the whole movie is like a punchline to the grim joke told at the beginning. It made me laugh a lot, but a lot of the scenes (particularly when the secretary starts to shun his affections) made for uncomfortable viewing.

In high school I decided to write my term paper on the influence of Akira Kurosawa. It was a simple way to just watch movies the entire term and write about them, but I ended up becoming a pretty big fan after watching all 30 (31?) of his films.
Actually, even though I love his epic movies from the 50s and 60s, I have to say I really love his early movies with Toshiro Mifune. Critics love slamming them, calling Mifune a ham and the production sub-par, but I think they are some of his best work.

As a fan of the spaghetti western, I bow (get it, bow) in reverence to Kurosawa's as an influence on that genre (hell, a victim of merciless rip-offery).

Colonel Panic wrote:He was attached to direct the Japanese scenes in Tora! Tora! Tora! but the American studio (20th Century Fox, I believe), worried over his legendary bourbon consumption, wrote a clause into the contract that required him to keep an itemized budget of any alcohol consumed on the set. Kurosawa was deeply insulted by this, so he dropped off the project.

This is not true. The official explanation is that Kurosawa's footage was rejected by the studio, and when he was asked to reshoot it, he left the project. The reason for his footage being rejected is that he reportedly tanked the footage on purpose because he was not happy with the terms of his contract with 20th century fox, or because he felt that they had misled him about the terms of the project (I think he was told that he would be working with David Lean on it, which was either false, or couldn't be arranged.) The other reason I've heard for him leaving the project (or getting fired) was because of the exacting nature of his filming, and 20th Century Fox worrying that he was going to destroy their budget. (He reportedly wanted the interiors of the battleships painted a brighter white at one point. Whether this is him deliberately sabotaging his good will with Fox to get out of the contract, or just him being regular old Kurosawa, I don't know.)

Though it's true he had problems with alcohol later in life, his bourbon consumption was not "legendary".

Some of the footage Kurosawa shot did make it into the final movie, and he reportedly shot quite a bit before dropping out of the project. So your story about him being insulted by an alcohol consumption clause at the contract stage of negotiations is just a myth.

Colonel Panic wrote:He was a bipolar egomaniac, like many great directors have been.

Source please? Because I am going to have to shoot this one down as not true as well.

Kurosawa's suicide attempt was the result of his first failure at the box office, and the inordinate strain he had been under at that point in his life. His project, having been a failure, made him depressed, and suicide was a culturally acceptable act in his view (as it is the view of many Japanese - consistently the country with the highest suicide rate in the world). He survived his suicide attempt and went on producing films.

I've never heard anyone say that Kurosawa was bi-polar, and I've never read it anywhere either. You may be thinking of Kinugasa, who was. There is also quite a bit of speculation that Mifune Toshiro was. So perhaps you just got confused.

As for Kurosawa being an egomaniac, he was an auteur and consumate perfectionist. He was involved in every aspect of the film, and he was very insistent on getting his vision realised. I've seen an exhibition of his watercolours (Kurosawa was trained as a painter, and storyboarded all his movies himself - in colour) and the finished film matches his painting almost exactly. Which just goes to show you that when he had a vision of how he wanted something to look, he didn't compromise on it in anyway. (I'll look around and scan some of his paintings in later, if this thread keeps up - his style was very Van Gogh) He was very exacting, and intense. However, not necessarily an egomaniac. In many respects he was quite humble. The only person I ever heard refer to Kurosawa as an egomaniac was Mifune, and we can dismiss that one out of hand, as it came from another fairly intense person who would go great lengths to express himself.

He did reportedly have quite a temper, but every interview I ever saw with someone who worked with him described him as intense, and sometimes having a personality that was fierce, but mostly kind hearted.

Eksvplot wrote:anyone here check out the recent japanese film Nobody Knows by Hirokazu Kore-Eda? it's gotta be one of the greatest movies of our time. fucking brilliant on so many levels. i'd trade that movie alone for a whole shelf full of Kurosawa. it's deeply moving.

With the passing of Imamura Shohei and Itami Juzo, Kore-Eda Hirokazu is just about Japan's last hope for great filmmaking. (Ichikawa Kon is still alive, and surprisingly just made a new film, but he's 93 now, and, well...)

Hirokazu's documentaries are all excellent, as are his films, and his interest in both society and humanity keeps his films well grounded. He's very talented.

Apart from that, Japan is just full of horror and ultra violent action directors. It also has an incredible amount of bad actors (or rather, a system that brings people who can't act to the fore and gives them preference over people who can act.)

Schadenfreude wrote:As a fan of the spaghetti western, I bow (get it, bow) in reverence to Kurosawa's as an influence on that genre (hell, a victim of merciless rip-offery).

Of course, Kurosawa himself was deeply influenced by the Westerns of John Ford. So, really, it just came full circle.

Eksvplot wrote:don't mean to piss in the punchbowl here, but i always thought Kurosawa was sort of overrated. more to the point, i don't know why he's constantly name checked in magazines and various polls as one of THE great foreign directors of all time and yet a far superior filmmaker like Robert Bresson remains largely unknown here in the states. this is very strange to me.

anyone here check out the recent japanese film Nobody Knows by Hirokazu Kore-Eda? it's gotta be one of the greatest movies of our time. fucking brilliant on so many levels. i'd trade that movie alone for a whole shelf full of Kurosawa. it's deeply moving.


http://www.lhp.com.sg/nobodyknows/

The why is fairly simple. First off: Kurosawa's work informs not only American Westerns but, a set of European Westerns that are seen as a whole other category once there visuals are accounted for. Not many other foreign filmakers can claim that.

Second: Consider Ran. Few(without regard to nationality) directors have made films based on the persons work that Ran is based on and, make a film that is possibly as good as the work it is based on.

As far as art, I'd suggest taking another look at some of the long shots in Seven Samurai before making a statement like your final one. It's one thing to create a moving work that you are mostly responsible for. It would seem to be far more impressive to see when the beauty in the outside world will work to your ends and harness it to that end.

Personally I think the who-influenced/ripped-who argument with Kurosawa misses one of the best points of his work. As many of his idols were related to English-speaking cinema, he had a really fresh attitude to using the English-speaking influence in his work. He didn't really discern between things, so in his work you see John Ford and Ed McBain homages right next to his Shakespeare influences and other "serious" tropes. He really handles 'em with intelligence and wit.

My only complaint is the occasional heavy-handedness. The rotten fruit thing in Stray Dog is naff, I think the audience is aware of the metaphor without close ups of smashed tomatos and a wee speech.