And so I come to Akira Kurosawa’s last film, made five years before he died. When I watched Madadayo last night at the Pacific Film Archive, I completed my journey through all of Kurosawa’s works in (mostly) chronological order. That same screening also ended the PFA’s own, non-chronological retrospective of the same 30 films. Madadayo … Continue reading Kurosawa Diary, Part 30: Madadayo

Little actually happens in Akira Kurosawa’s 29th and penultimate film, Rhapsody in August, and nothing really bad. Something horrendous happened 45 years earlier (the atom bombing of Nagasaki), but that’s ancient history. It’s time for Japan and America to forgive and, if not forget, then to honor the memory together. Six years after the devastatingly … Continue reading Kurosawa Diary, Part 29: Rhapsody in August

Warner Brothers called this film Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams when they released it in 1990. The name is appropriate, and not only because Kurosawa wrote and directed the film. The eight vignettes that make up his only anthology feature are, allegedly, based on Kurosawa’s own dreams. I was recovering from a herniated disc, and under doctor’s … Continue reading Kurosawa Diary, Part 28: Dreams

I doubt anyone else ever made a movie as sad, as tragic, as despairing of the human condition, and yet so beautiful as Akira Kurosawa’s Ran. To give yourself over to it is to experience, in your gut, that many people are capable of unspeakable evil, that these people tend to come out on top, … Continue reading Kurosawa Diary, Part 27: Ran

When I started my project of watching every Kurosawa film in the order they were made, the first question I asked myself was “Even Kagemusha?” It wasn’t that his big Coppola-and-Lucas spectacle was his worst film (it isn’t). But unlike the other bad ones I’d seen, I had revisited this one on DVD—seeing the full … Continue reading Kurosawa Diary, Part 26: Kagemusha

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 … Continue reading Kurosawa Diary, Part 25: Dersu Uzala

Akira Kurosawa’s first color film, Dodes’ka-den, bursts with vibrant hues like a Technicolor musical. Yet it is arguably his most depressing work. A commercial flop when initially released (its failure so upset the director he attempted suicide), it has never gained a classic reputation. That’s too bad, because it deserves one. I rediscovered Dodes’ka-den last … Continue reading Kurosawa Diary, Part 24: Dodes’ka-den

With the release of Red Beard, we come to an important turning point in Kurosawa’s career, although not one that he was aware of at the time. From here on in, he would make fewer, and far more somber, motion pictures. Counting years, his career was less than half over. He had been making movies … Continue reading Kurosawa Diary, Part 23: Transition