Akira Kurosawa

[Nerd]

Happened to watch two of his movies back to back last weekend. Rashomon and Yojimbo. It was the first time I was watching kurosawa movies.. I just dont get it.. Whats so great about him :oops:

Rashomon, the plot was extremely good but it was extremely boring. I could not control myself from sleeping. The last five minutes was kickass though.

Yojimbo was a better movie, I thought. It was extremely entertaining but I dint find anything *great* in that movie.

Am I missing something :oops:

[ssanjinika]

Well...he did bring out movies which were far ahead of his time :roll: We are still copying those ideas now.Doesnt it say something about him??

[rocketboy]

exactly nerd . I have watched Seven Samurai. It will easily go down as one of the most boring movies I have ever watched.

[kannannn]

:shock: Kasi, yes you are missing a lot. ''Seven Samurai' is an effort against which all future action movies will be judged': thus said a critic (can't remember who).


See the two posts here for more (courtesy A_A)
http://forumhub.mayyam.com/hub/viewtopic.php?p=352282#352282

[Nerd]

SS: Thats quite possible. His movies were way ahead of his time.

Kannan: Thanks for throwing some light on his technical brilliance. I m not a hater of slow-paced movies.. I loved and hailed movies like eternal sunshine of the ...., life is beautiful, a beautiful mind, schindler's list, saving pvt ryan etc.., those movies are soul-stirring.. I dont find anything of that sort in AK's movies..

Anyway, I have borrowed 7 samurai from my friend and will watch it over the weekend. My friend was like you gotta watch AK's movies more than twice to really appreciate them. Dont know how far it is true and I guess I cant sit thru Rashomon again :oops:

[P_R]

I was rather bored with the first two Kurosawa movies I saw, that too in a theatre: Jojiro and Madodoyo. Overhyped I thought.

But my experience with Rashomon was completely different. It took me four year to get myself to watch Kurosawa again. My room-mate had it in his comp and I was wide awake at 3:00 in the morning. I wanted to watch a movie that would put me to sleep. So I thought I'd watch Rashomon. I was completely taken by it. I watched it 2-3 times and then left for my classes in the morning.

But even in class I seemed to be thinking of the rigor mortis hands of the dead man, the breeze exposing the rider's legs..... I realized I have never recalled movie visuals like that before. And from absolutely nowhere I was able to recall , from four years back, a couple of scenes from Madodoyo and Jojiro that were appealing by themselves.
I was tempted to think they have remained there like a mustard wedged
in the tooth, that tastes the next day morning.

But I was simultaneously wary of finding this retrospective beauty. I doubted whether I was trying extra hard to read into this just because the name was big ( a crime I suspected my room-mate of).So I kept to myself the fact that I was impressed. As if to prove to myself I went to watch "Main Hoon Na" that night :-) .

Seven Samurai, which I saw a few weeks later, was not as profound in its story as Rashomon. The Dvd had a commentary by a guy clled Micheal Jeck, a Japanese film historian . Till then my approach to film commentary (or for that matter any sort of art commentary) was negative: "Either I see it or I don't. To have it explained is ridiculous." But that day somehow I swallowed my pride and turned the commentary on. He said one ego redeeming line that was as true as it was comforting: "through this commentary I hope I will help you enjoy certain nuances in your 2nd or 3rd viewing that I noticed in my 13th-14th viewing".

It was one helluva guided tour. I had till then, maintained that a film should be appealing in itself. It is only over and above that, that the viewer should fall for the techniques of the storytelling etc. If you are thinking of "how they did it" that means the narrative is not engrossing enough. But after that I felt, like it or not, there was no going back. It became a simultaneous affair to be interested in the story and the storytelling.

[alwarpet_andavan]

Yen Gurunaadharin Gurunaadhar Kurosawasan-ukku Saranam!

PR,
I think everyone has the dilemma you talked about in your last para. Sometimes i feel i'm straining to find "things" in movies just because it has been hailed by the public, critics and movie bigwigs. I have now reconciled to the fact that this is quite normal and if we accept it and move on, its just fine :) I call this the over-the-shoulder syndrome. Still, its very hard not to be moved or impacted by Kurosawa's movies.

In my opinion, guided by my own experiences in watching Kurosawa's movies, by listeneing to commentaries in DVD's and also by discussions i've had with my assistant director friend [Chithiram Pesuthadi], i think for Kurosawa, cinema is first and foremost a visual medium and he wants cinematic impact. Hence, the importance of technique in his films. Many scenes would leave us with unanswered questions. For e.g in "Ran" - i would rate it amongst his best-, most of the shots were telephoto long range shots, a technique he adopted after Ikiru, if i'm not wrong. In quite a few scenes, when we would expect a close-up shot of a character who is crying or expressing some strong emotion, Kurosawa would maintain the long-range shot, sometimes even having the camera at the back of the actor in question! Adhellam anubavikkanum, aaraaya kudathu! :)

Apart from attaching importance to visual style and composition, he also places great emphasis for music in his movies, many times using a western score. Maybe this was also one of the reasons why he was dismissed in Japan as being a "Western" style director, ignoring Japanese culture and all. He would be deeply involved in the composition of the background score. I think musically, "Ran" would be the best. Even if i hadn't known who Kurosawa was, the opening scene of "Ran" would have had me spellbound nevertheless.

There is something to his movies [like Kubricks'] which has to be seen and experienced. Oru alavukku thaan puriyidhu, puriyavum avasiyam illai. chumma enjoy panna vendiyadhu dhaan.

The last Kurosawa movie i saw was "The Hidden Fortress", which i should admit put me to sleep in a few scenes. However, you can watch it for Toshiro Miffune alone :thumbsup:

[alwarpet_andavan]

Happened to watch two of his movies back to back last weekend. Rashomon and Yojimbo. It was the first time I was watching kurosawa movies.. I just dont get it.. Whats so great about him :oops:

Rashomon, the plot was extremely good but it was extremely boring. I could not control myself from sleeping. The last five minutes was kickass though.

Yojimbo was a better movie, I thought. It was extremely entertaining but I dint find anything *great* in that movie.

Am I missing something :oops:

Rashomon:
I suggest you watch it again one or two times, when you are in a thoughtful mood. I'm sure you will like it!

I think its the simplest and yet probably the best movie ever made. Sometimes its even scary. Scary because human nature can be so sometimes. I couldn't sleep that night. And i couldn't bring myself to watch it again since then because of some inexplicable reason. It was the first Kurosawa movie i watched and i remember after virtually every scene, i would have an unanswered question. Some questions would be answered in the next frame, some are still unanswered. The best part is there is no "truth" which is solved in the end. It can be any of the versions.
Just a sample - the fight between Miffune and the husband. Frighteningly realistic. they spend more time running away from each other, panting, than fighting......

Seven Samurai: The main reason the viewer might be tempted to ask "What's so great about this" is because of the lack of context. It had so many "firsts" in it which are now taken for granted. The choreography in the action sequences, the clarity in expressing the landscape to the viewer, the pacing, the characterization, THAT scene of Toshiro Miffune - classics! The best part is the ending :)

The striking aspect of Kurosawa's films [many of his films] is that, unlike some Eurpoean films or other celebrated 'classics', they are interesting to a lay film watcher like me, with the interest in the plot maintained throughout.

[P_R]

i think for Kurosawa, cinema is first and foremost a visual medium and he wants cinematic impact. In fact, slowly I started to develop a (very elitist) distaste for vala-vala dialogues being spoken. Retrospectively I thought of all the my favourite Tamil films and even they, I began to feel, had a lot of talking.

The attention to detail was mindboggling. There is a scene where two of the Samurai are standing in nearly the right end of the screen. A group of guys run from right to left shouting there is a fight going on (Kyuzo's introduction). At that moment there is a woman with a baby enters the screen running in from the left and leaves the screen at the right end i.e. in the direction away from the fight. Her screen presence is one second flat. I was genuinely stunned. I started feeling that Kamal gave the bajrang-bali on Abhyankar's bedside far too much screen presence :-)

I have watched only these 4 Kuroswa films (Ran is on the cards). And my experience is, as described above, more personal than objective. It is not necessarily linked with the films per se, but more fundamentally with the way I started seeing films.
Omigod I sound exactly like my former roomie now . :)

[Nerd]

Seven Samurai: The main reason the viewer might be tempted to ask "What's so great about this" is because of the lack of context. It had so many "firsts" in it which are now taken for granted. The choreography in the action sequences, the clarity in expressing the landscape to the viewer, the pacing, the characterization, THAT scene of Toshiro Miffune - classics! The best part is the ending

I did watch 7S last sunday. I must admit I was bowled over by the visuals and Toshiro Miffune. The scene where he plays a prank to attract the attention of the villagers was extremely funny. The stunt chorerography indeed was breathtaking. Their strategical moves and the way the last one hour of the film was picturezed still lingers my mind. The end was absolutely stunning. IMO, its the best of the three that I have seen (I ve just seen all the three just once). Having said all that, I still love kubrick more than AK :oops:

[Aalavanthan]

Very informative posts you guys. Its suprising that when we talk about the origin of motion pictures, people only talk about Charlie Chaplin. I am a big freak of foreign movies esp. Hollywood but never bothered to dig into the trendsetters of the same. I have seen Kamal's interviews wherein he mentions about Kurasawa but never bothered to check out his films. I did a scan through in imdb and happily punnagai-ed that I have got one more person to explore in cinema.

Thanks again for inspiring, will check out all his movies :)

[atomhouse]

The most striking think about 'Rashoman' is that it had a very minimal cast , locations & dialogues.And the actors were stunning!If not for the actors, the film could never have happened.It was a gripping movie,so involving.I was warned like,'be attentive,this is a genius work' before watching it.But after watching the movie, I think the genius lies in its simple narrative & the humanitarian note it left, and you need not be prepared to watch it! The cinematographic genius struck me only when I was reliving the movie.

[great]

For all Akira Kurosawa fans, Sathyam theatre is screening Rashomon on 27.08.06 Sunday at 9.00 A.M