Akira Kurosawa’s 25th film, Dersu Uzala, sits alone amongst his other work. It’s his only film not set and shot in Japan and without Japanese actors or dialog. It’s the only one shot in a large format—Sovscope 70, the Russian equivalent of Todd-AO and Super Panavision 70. And it won him his only Best Foreign Film Academy Award.
And it was the first Kurosawa film I saw in first run. (Well, American first run, which came nearly two years after playing the American festival circuit.) I first saw it at the Surf Theater, and much as I loved the movie, I kept thinking about how much better it would look on the giant screen of the UC (memories of dead theaters!), the place where I eventually saw it I don’t remember how many times. Like Lawrence of Arabia and 2001, I consider Dersu Uzala an exclusively big-screen experience–not appropriate for television (although I’m willing to reconsider if a really good Blu-ray version comes out). When I saw it three years ago in New York, it was the first time in years.
Last night, as part of my project of watching all of Kurosawa’s films in chronological order, I caught it last night at the Pacific Film Archive. It was part of their mammoth Akira Kurosawa Centennial series.
Set in the early 20th century and based on a true story, Dersu Uzala examines the 
friendship of two men from very different worlds—a cartographer in the Czarist army exploring a remote part of Siberia, and an indigenous hunter he hires as a guide. The hunter, Dersu Uzala, at first seems odd, quaint, and superstitious. Captain Arsenyev and his men (mostly the men) find him amusing. But his skills, knowledge, and basic humanity soon win them over.
Judged solely on the film’s first half (or maybe even first two thirds), this is Kurosawa’s most upbeat picture. People are challenged and even threatened by a harsh natural environment, but they treat other human beings with kindness and compassion. And even that harsh natural environment is gorgeous to look at (this is easily Kurosawa’s most beautiful film), and its dangers can always be overcome by knowledge, quick thinking, and hard work.
But the picture turns dark in the second half. A confrontation with unseen bandits brings human cruelty into the forest. That sequence, which ends rather anti-climatically, is just a taste. The real problems come with a far more mundane threat: old age. It’s tough enough on all of us, but for a man who lives by himself in the forest, it’s a threat on a whole different level.
Near the end, this film brimming with beautiful nature photography, contains one of the saddest images in film: An old man, sitting on the floor, starring through the grate of a wood-burning furnace, watching what little he can see of the flames within.
Old age appears to be hurting the film Dersu Uzala as well. The print the PFA screened, probably the same one I saw in New York, is in sorry condition. And yet, I’ve been told, it’s the best print in North America. Someone has got to restore this film before it’s too late.
I’ll be finishing this Kurosawa project very quickly, seeing the remaining five films in 11 days. This speed-up will allow me to catch as many of them as possible (three, actually) at the PFA.
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