My first column here at Matchflick was on my favorite movie (archive, baby!) so now that I'm nearing a year here at the site why not throw out a column on my favorite director? Some people have Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick or even Peter Jackson. I have Akira Kurosawa. To some foreign film purists that pick may be kind of suspect. For all the classic America directors the foreign movie world has its directing greats as well. Akira Kurosawa is about the most accessible classic foreign director of all time. Sergei Eisenstein, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, the list goes on and on of the classics. All of them made movies that are so complex and abstract that most people wouldn't have the patience to watch them, let alone appreciate them. Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese director that made many great movies in several different genres, but what he will always be remembered for are his movies about samurais. His most famous movies aren't exactly action or popcorn flicks, but they do hold a high level of pure entertainment that makes the movies very easy to like. So, to all the elitists out there, you may now call me a scrub. I don't care! Akira Kurosawa is my favorite director and these are my picks to his best movies.
Rashômon
Akira Kurosawa directed his first film in 1943 with a film about Judo called Sugata Sanshiro. Seven years and nine movies later he made his first great movie with Rashomon. Some of you out there have probably heard of the term "Rashomon style" in movie reviews before. That term refers to this movie's form of telling the same events through three different points of view. For those who haven't seen the movie, think Courage Under Fire, but a billion times better. The three different views in Rashomon all describe a newly married couple traveling in 12th century Japan when a bandit attacks and kills the husband. We hear every side of the story. Be it from the widow, the bandit or the spirit of the dead husband, each one is very different. Which one is to be believed? Was the bandit a vicious rapist and killer? Was the husband out dueled for the right to his wife? Just maybe, it's more complicated than any explanation. Just maybe, all were evil and all were innocent. That's the beauty of Rashomon.
Ikiru
To some, this is Akira Kurosawa's best movie. I would say this is his best non-samurai effort. Ikiru is about a man who after a life of nothing learns he has cancer. He has a nothing job, a family who couldn't care less about him and a life that so far has meant nothing to anyone. Since he only has a few months to live, the man decides he will try and live all the life he's missed before he dies. Ikiru is nowhere near as famous as some of Kurosawa's more colossal movies, but it's a masterpiece none the less. Many movies have put characters in a situation where the question is asked to the viewer "Have you lived your life?", but none have done it quite so acutely graceful in mixing the pain and beauty of life ending. If you're one of those people who won't watch foreign films because of subtitles, this is what you're missing. Just some of the greatest movies ever.
Throne of Blood
Is Shakespeare's appeal universal? If you were to ask Akira Kurosawa (you can't, he's a little dead) you would hear a big "YES". In 1957 Kurosawa made his adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth with Throne of Blood. Despite Orson Welles best attempt, Throne of Blood is the best version of Macbeth I've ever seen. One day when lost in the forest two Japanese Lords encounter an old woman who predicts great things for one of the Lords, Washizu. Washizu will one day be Emperor, but it will mean he has to kill the other Lord who's with him. When he returns home and tells his wife of the prophecy she more than encourages him to make sure it comes true. Washizu carries out her plots to kill his fellow Lord and then even the Emperor. With no one in his way now, Washizu has gone from a Lord to Emperor. Now he'll be as great as the old lady said he would be. He only has to hope no one ever finds out what he's done. What's the ending? Washizu faces a firing squad in feudal Japan, but instead of guns, it's a barrage of arrows. I give away the ending because it's not the essence of the movie. From the beginning we know Washizu is damned, but it's how he gets to his end that's the story.
The Hidden Fortress
Do you like Star Wars: A New Hope? Do you want to see a Japanese samurai movie that's much better? George Lucas had credited Hidden Fortress with being part of the inspiration for the original Star Wars movie. Star Wars isn't the rip off that some have claimed, but there are quite a few similarities. The Hidden Fortress follows a Japanese warrior as he must lead a wanted princess to safety through a Japanese countryside that is anything but safe. Along the way the warrior must accept help from two bumbling idiots. Now does that sound a little familiar? Split the warrior into Han and Luke, and then throw the two idiots together and you got C3PO. Of course, the princess stays the same (the hair is a little different). A New Hope revolutionized the sci-fi genre. It will always be far more remembered than The Hidden Fortress. I wonder what percentage of Star Wars movie-goers have even heard of this movie. Well, at least some of us know where the genius came from originally.
Yojimbo
A New Hope may have been inspired by The Hidden Fortress, but Fistful of Dollars and Last Man Standing are direct remakes of this film. Instead of a gunslinger or a mob enforcer Yojimbo has a samurai. The samurai, Sanjuro, wanders into a small village that has two competing gangs. Well, for a great samurai like Sanjuro that just means profit. He plays both gangs off one another all the while trying to pull as much as he can out of the situation. Each gang believes this ultimate warrior will sway the tide to their advantage. Yojimbo isn't a masterpiece. It's as close to "popcorn" as I would say Kurosawa ever got. It was made in 1961 and followed by a sequel, Sanjuro, the next year. Mostly, Yojimbo is an action movie, but it's a damn good one. I love Dollars series (column coming soon) and Last Man Standing was an okay Bruce Willis action flick, but neither one match Yojimbo. There's no way a gunslinger or a mob enforcer could be as cool as a samurai!
High and Low
Wow, such a brilliant movie! It's not a samurai flick and it doesn't take place in feudal Japan. It does take place in 1960's Japan though. High and Low is about a moderately successful shoe manufacturer who must decide whether or not to sacrifice his wealth for his chauffeur's kidnapped child. The kidnappers made the mistake of grabbing the chauffeur's child rather than the wealthy man's own boy. So, the greedy man must decide if his wealth is more important than the life of a child who means nothing to him. What will he choose? The life of a boy or his life of wealth? If there's one thing that is so resounding to me when reflecting on Kurosawa's career it's the richness of the subject matters he chose to dive into. None are more compelling than High and Low. What would you do? Would you give up everything that matters to you to save someone else's life? The rich man (Toshirô Mifune) has some gold at the end of his horrible rainbow. He finds salvation. Wow, such a brilliant movie!
Ran
Kurosawa does Macbeth? How about Kurosawa does King Lear? In what many consider his last great movie; Kurosawa makes what probably is his most epic film with Ran. It's the story of an old king with three sons. Two corrupt, one good. The movie displays the treachery of the corrupt sons' attempts at grabbing power and the loyal one who tries to honor his aging father. Much blood is shed and lives are ruined all in the quest of power. So much blood is shed that it makes Ran Kurosawa's most brutal film. If you do decide to watch it, pick an evening for nothing but. It's a pretty long movie and it requires your full attention, but I promise it's worth it!
Akira Kurosawa's Dreams
Akira Kurosawa's Dreams is virtually eight movies in one. Don't worry; it's not a 16 hour long epic. Akira Kurosawa's Dreams is several stories of how man is causing his own downfall and extinction. All eight stories deal with man and his involvement with nature. Now, I'm not going to go into any global warming connections. Politics aside, Dreams is both a beautiful movie and a sad one. It gives a vision of what possibly could be our end as a species. It's going to happen somehow. These eight tales are Akira Kurosawa's dreams of how it could happen, or maybe, what we could turn into to push the dreaded finale back. Whether Kurosawa's dreams are of nuclear meltdown, ravages of war or a dream of what a beautiful future could be, the one word that describes this movie to me is "beautiful". Maybe that's why I've used the word so much. Many will not share my love of this movie. Hey, Kurosawa is my favorite director so I'm biased, but this is a fantastic movie.
Seven Samurai
Ikiru may be Kurosawa's best non-samurai movie, but Seven Samurai is Akira Kurosawa's best movie, period! Seven Samurai is certainly the most famous of any of Kurosawa's works, and maybe the most famous classic foreign movie ever made. Like The Hidden Fortress or Yojimbo, Hollywood had to step in a steal a piece of Kurosawa's genius when they remade this film with The Magnificent Seven. In a funny way it's very ironic that Hollywood would make two of Kurosawa's films into westerns for the fact that Kurosawa had said that it was American westerns that started his love of film. His love of film has been ever so returned to the director. The film world has stood in awe of Kurosawa for over half a century now, but not more so for any of his films than Seven Samurai.
Seven Samurai is a tale of seven samurais (like that?) that band together to defend a poor farming village in feudal Japan from bandits. Ran may have been Kurosawa's biggest movie in terms of scale, but when speaking of characters and story with entirely encompassing quality maybe only a handful of movies have done it better than Seven Samurai. Whether it be the farmers sacrificing their own food to please the samurai, young love or the honor of seasoned warriors fighting against almost insurmountable odds, the movie is so rich with entertainment. I haven't even mentioned the battle scenes that can stack up to anything any film will ever produce. Today in Gladiator and Troy we see the amazing advances with a computer or in fight choreography, but back in 1954, Kurosawa had nothing close to what Ridley Scott or Wolfgang Petersen have in today's world. The result didn't look like something from a computer in Seven Samurai. All the action looks very real. Of the many great staples that is the genius of Kurosawa, brutality and honestly stand at the front. It's never more apparent than in his ultimate masterpiece, Seven Samurai.
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It's amazing that I was recently wondering if Kurosawa would still be my favorite director. I started growing really fond of Martin Scorsese. Just writing this column reminds me of why Kurosawa was my original favorite. His movies are everything that I normally love in film. They're brutal, entertaining, poetic, intelligent and just plain brilliant. I don't think I can honestly call Kurosawa the greatest director of all time. There have been so many amazing filmmakers over the history of film, but for me, Kurosawa is at worst in the top 10. Not all of his movies are great, but the worst were at least good. The strong work he did goes beyond what I've written about here. When looking over his filmography to pick his movies for my guide as to what to watch for Kurosawa I stopped at nine. I could've gone on. You could easily add Dersu Uzala, Kagemusha, Red Beard, One Wonderful Sunday and many others to this list. The end to Akira Kurosawa's brilliance is that he's no longer alive to make films. Otherwise, he'd still be showing all of us Americans how it's done!
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| Andy York |
Andy is a life long movie fanatic. The first movie he saw in the theater was Back to the Future, Part 2 at the age of 3 and he has loved movies ever since.
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