More Kurosawa.

Throne of Blood (1957), directed by Akira Kurosawa. The story is familiar, the Bard's Scottish play transposed to Japan. And suffused with Noh drama conventions. For me, this is one of the most, if not the most, visually arresting of Kurosawa's films. Sharp contrast, spare sets and minimalist interiors, the labyrinthine forest echoed in the labyrinthine arrows at the end, the mists, the running horses, the castle gates, the costumes, the moving forest, the single shape-shifting witch, all this is grand and powerful. Whereas Shakespeare employs spoken word gloriously, Kurosawa offers glorious visuals. Mifune's Washizu is intense and agonizingly torn between friendship, loyalty and his Lady who serves as his secret desire. The film offers long takes, something films today more often than not eschew. These long takes deliver slow progression to disaster and a race to death - both. Throne of Blood does not have the same human sweep of Seven Samurai; it is more internal, less social, but it does have unsurpassed scenes of a struggling human being. Of Kurosawa's Shakespeare films, I'll take this one over the other two.

 

Okay, I will say it: there's something rotten in the state of things. The Bad Sleep Well (1960), directed by Akira Kurosawa. This noir set in post war Japan fulfils expectations; it is dark, seedy, and sad. Let them eat cake. From opening wedding with its gigantic cake to final scenes in the ruins of a munitions factory, this film is relentless in its depiction of a world gone wrong. Capitalism is rife with corruption. What's a sad sack to do but plot to gain a modicum of revenge. Everyone in this film is crippled, at least one person noticeably so. The Hamlet references allow Kurosawa to weave politics into this story of one man's desire for revenge. Behind all the corporate greed, excess, and double-dealing is a mysterious figure, never seen and never heard but definitely there. What evil lurks at the other end of the telephone line? Perhaps this linking of the personal, the economic, and the political explains the many visual triangles we see. Kurosawa's deep focus is also nice because it tells us that we may be able to see deeply into a scene, but this does not necessarily mean we know what is going on. The bustling of the news reporters and the various headlines we see are fine reminders of the failure of a world sophisticated in delivering news, but not in eradicating the rot that news depends upon. The Bad Sleep Well is a slow burn of a film.

Ran (1985), directed by Akira Kurosawa. Sumptuous. This film famously retells the story of an elderly leader who passes on his leadership to his eldest son, and then slips into a fog of dementia. The sons may replace daughters, but this is the King Lear story right down to the fool and the vile jelly. The pace for such a long film is furious, in keeping with the chaos signalled in the film's title. The battle scenes are suitably brutal and bloody. The more intimate scenes are psychologically intense. Some scenes are reminiscent of what we see in The Seven Samurai, although here they are in vivid colour. What differs in the two films is, perhaps, the humanity. Ran offers few close-ups, whereas The Seven Samurai delights in faces and in human variety. In Ran, we mostly see things from a distance or a middle distance. What we see is glorious, to be sure. I was about to write that I miss the humanity of The Seven Samurai, but then I may be missing the point. I ought also to mention the echoes of Throne of Blood, especially in the figure of Kaede, wife of Taro and then of his brother. Somehow the echoes of The Seven Samurai and Throne of Blood give this film a sense of an ending, of something forever behind and beyond. Kurosawa's achievement here is astounding, especially when we consider his eyesight was failing. For someone whose eyes were dimming, Kurosawa made a fabulously colourful and carefully framed film. He had prepared for shooting the film by constructing storyboards for everything we see. I have never seen it, but I think these storyboards are available in book form. Before I cease and desist, I have to mention the visual homage in the film to John Ford.

The Quiet Duel (1949), directed by Akira Kurosawa. This film may seem dated because the problem in the story does not resonate now as it did back in the post war period. That problem is syphilis. In 1944, a young doctor (Toshiro Mifune) contacts the disease while operating on a soldier. We watch as he cuts himself during the operating procedure, in a rather excruciating scene. In any case, now having this dreaded STD, he feels he cannot fulfill his promise of marriage to his fiancé. Fast forward four years and the young doctor, in practice with his father, remains single, although his fiancé has remained patient and also puzzled. He refuses to tell her why he will not marry her. What makes all this melodrama powerful is of course the backdrop the war and postwar period. The cinematography intensifies things with its use of light and shadow and deep focus. Often we see the doctor through a web of branches and foliage or through a window or doorway or beside an ironwork fence, all this reminding us of his entrapment. Clearly, the film is about the disastrous consequences of militarism. It also has to do with honour and human suffering. As always, Kurosawa is intense in his interest in character and the film has several memorable characters, including a young unwed mother who becomes a nurse and who speaks her mind.

I Live in Fear (1955), directed by Akira Kurosawa. Toshiro Mifune is magnificent in this film. He plays an elderly patriarch who is terrified of the Atomic Bomb! His paranoia leads him to plan a relocation to a farm in Brazil, thinking this move will keep himself and his extended family safe. Oh, and by extended family, I mean not only his children and grandchildren, but also two mistresses and the children of theses mistresses, plus the son of another mistress now deceased. Of course, his family do not wish to relocate, especially since they run a foundry and know nothing of farming. The plot turns on a family petition to the family courts to have the old fellow certified incompetent to make such decisions for himself and for others. Much of the action we experience through the eyes and feelings of a local dentist who serves on the family court. This focalization allows Kurosawa to maintain sympathy for the old man as he descends deeper into mania. Like so many post war films, I Live in Fear takes us into mental strain and instability (Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor anyone!). One might think a film like this is now dated, but we continue to live in a world that fosters fear, indeed requires fear in order to support the late capitalist drive to continue its onslaught on the planet. So there.