A note on Kurosawa

Director Akira Kurosawa on the set with actor Toshiro Mifune.

To date on the Scarry Film Club, it looks like the single director named most often (and by the greatest number of contributors) is Akira Kurosawa.

So far we have . . .

JTS3: Ikiru (To Live)

WCS: Ran

JTS: Rashomon

I've also recently written posts on my Scarry Thoughts blog about two other Kurosawa films:

Film for the Age of COVID: "Red Beard" by Kurosawa

FILM ABOUT HIROSHIMA: Kurosawa's "I Live in Fear" (Nuclear Danger: Three Ways of Talking About the Unmentionable)

This year is the centenary of the birth of the great actor in so many of Kurosawa's films, Toshiro Mifune. The best place to watch many Kurosawa/Mifune collaborations in one place is on the Criterion Channel.

Ran

Akira Kurosawa, 1985.

Ran would be the unsurpassable film adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear had Kurosawa not surpassed King Lear itself to create a classic in its own right. Dark and joyful, ethereal and starkly realistic, a mesmerizingly beautiful portrayal of the ugliness of betrayal and despair.











On Wikipedia: Ran

(JTS, 3/24/2020)


Fun fact: Kurosawa was a talented graphic artist, and made his own storyboards for his films - you can see storyboards for Ran and other films here.  (JTS3, 4/9/2020)

Rashomon

Akira Kurosawa, 1950.

On Wikipedia: Rashomon

On Kanopy: Rashomon

(JTS, 3/24/2020)

Ikiru (To Live)

Akira Kurosawa, 1952.

On Wikipedia: Ikiru

On Kanopy: Ikiru

A bureaucrat living a life of drudgery decides to make a change when he gets bad news at the doctor's office.

I was tickled to realize there was this whole other side to Kurosawa, who I thought of as the Master of the Samurai Film. It opened a whole new world to me.

I love the scene of the old man rocking slowly by himself on a swing in a snowy playground, humming a song from his childhood.

(JTS3, 2/27/2020)