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Kurosawa, the Modern Master

One of my closest friends Vishal is a fierce sleeper when it comes to watching what I consider great movies on DVD. His list of the greatest films that he has slept through over the years consists of such great titles as Doctor Zhivago (1965), Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to stop worrying and Love the Bomb (1967) and North by Northwest (1959). He was rather tolerant of Zhivago, lasting an impressive two hours of the three hour plus film but with Strangelove and North by Northwest, he started snoring even before the opening titles had a chance to reveal the name of the director. But even Vishal couldn’t take a moment to blink when we watched Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (1957). And what more, we were watching criterion’s fully restored 207-minute version of the film.

That’s Kurosawa for you! A master of the craft of cinema, he weaves a spell around you and commands your undivided attention throughout the duration of the film. An auteur in his own right and a man who oversees even the smallest fragments of his film, Kurosawa set new standards for what perfectionists should aspire to be. For long he has been regarded as one of the vertices of the quadrilateral of foreign cinema masters (foreign to English speaking nations) which features on its other three vertices the three other masters: Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman and Satyajit Ray.

Most of what I’ve learned about Akira Kurosawa was through his book Something like an Autobiography (written in 1982) and my favourite of his films The Seven Samurai (1957). It’s just stunning to learn that one man has dedicated his entire time in the pursuit of excellence in self-expression for over 50 years straight! The perseverance and the stamina required to accomplish a feat of this stature is just the highest example of what the human spirit is capable of.

In the 1930s, Kurosawa started his career in cinema as an assistant director to the then big Japanese director Kajiro Yamamoto. Kurosawa frequently refers to Yamamoto in his book as his teacher. He went onto work with him on many films that include Chakkiri Kinta (1937), The Millionaire (1936), Life is a Surprise (1938), A Husband’s Chastity (1937) and Horses (1941). It was a particular scene from the film Horses that Kurosawa vividly remembers in his book and describes it so:

“Near the end of Yama-san’s (Yamamoto) Horses is a scene where the foal is sold at a horse auction. The young heroine, Ine (Takamine Hideko), has to buy a big bottle of sake at one of the shops set up for the auction. She carries the bottle through the rowdy throng gathered for the auction, returning to where her family is gathered to commemorate the parting with their horse. The sound of the northern folk songs sung by the farmers standing around their horses while they drink, like the members of her own family, comes to Ine’s ears. Because it symbolizes her separation from the horse she has raised herself, it makes her unbearably sad.

The original idea for Horses had come from Yama-san. Listening on the radio, he happened to tune in to the live broadcast of a horse auction. Amid all the sounds of the sales he could hear the sobs of a young girl. This girl became his heroine, Ine. So this scene at the auction is the real core of the film.”

Kurosawa then goes onto describe how difficult it was to get this scene just right and how a certain Colonel Mabuchi had ordered the scene to be cut out of the film due to its depiction of daytime consumption of alcohol (which back then was banned in Japan). Kurosawa notoriously defended the inclusion of the scene in the film and after a nightlong hostile staring competition between him and Mabuchi, Kurosawa finally let the scene be cut out from the film but only after the great Colonel had bowed in front of him with both his hands on the floor in apology and took the humbler tone of a request.

Kurosawa was known for his hot temper and obstinacy right from the days of his stint as assistant director to Yamamoto. In fact whenever Kurosawa was to go and work for other directors, Yamamoto would make him “swear a solemn oath” that he would not loose his temper.

Perhaps the reason Kurosawa was so great at telling his stories because he was years ahead of his time in terms of every aspect of his expression. He used natural forces like the wind, the rain and the heat to set the feel for his scenes and at the same time he relied heavily on letting the actors do their part. His approach to filmmaking was that of creating an intricate fantasy, by going over each and every painstaking detail of it and making sure that his eye covers every micro-inch to make sure his vision is brought into the real world in the most accurate way. He was well known for making decisions in his films that were as audacious as they were epic, including burning a fully built castle to the ground, reconstructing the entire roof of a set and using up the entire water supply of a local reservoir for creating a heavy rain in Rashomon (1950) but only after colouring it all black with ink.

When asked about what he thought of cinema, he replied:

“The answer to this question is no easy matter. Long ago the Japanese novelist Shiga Naoya presented an essay written by his grandchild as one of the most remarkable prose pieces of his time. He had it published in a literary magazine. It was entitled “My Dog,” and ran as follows: “My dog resembles a bear; he also resembles a badger; he also resembles a fox…” It proceeded to enumerate the dog’s special characteristics, comparing each one to yet another animal, developing into a full list of the animal kingdom. However, the essay closed with, “But since he’s a dog, he most resembles a dog.”

I remember bursting out laughing when I read this essay, but it makes a very serious point. Cinema resembles so many other arts. If cinema has very literary characteristics, it also has theatrical qualities, a philosophical side, attributes of painting and sculpture and musical elements. But cinema is, in the final analysis, cinema.”

Kurosawa was openly inspired by the works of Shakespeare which are clearly seen in his films: Ran (King Lear), The Throne of Blood (Macbeth) and The Bad Sleep Well (Hamlet). He was also heavily inspired by Russian authors such as Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Arsenyev and Fyodor Dostoevsky. He had admitted to have been influenced by the works of American filmmaker John Ford whom he had a chance to meet. Ford said “you really like rain” to which Kurosawa replied “you’ve been paying attention to my films.”

Among many of Kurosawa’s admirers, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola are the biggest known. They’ve constantly expressed their gratitude for the master and have repeatedly paid homage to him in their films. The most well known of which is the famous “wipe” transition used in Lucas’s epic Star Wars saga that is a direct reference to the infamous wipes of several Kurosawa films. Later Lucas and Coppola went onto help Kurosawa produce the masterpiece Kagemusha (1980) which went onto win the prestigious Palme D’or that year. The master’s first.

Kurosawa was very encouraging of emerging filmmakers and his contemporaries alike. Speaking of the work of Satyajit Ray, he commented:

“The quiet but deep observation, understanding and love of the human race which are characteristic of all his films, have impressed me greatly. Mr. Ray is a wonderful and respectful man. I feel that he is a ‘giant’ of the movie industry.”

Ray held Kurosawa in great respect in return. He had the chance to have a talk with him in Tokyo, during which the two instantly bonded as described by Ray in his book Our Films, Their Films (published 1976). Ray writes:

“Kurosawa turned out to be that rarity- a tall Japanese. He also had a stoop, with an appropriate humility to go with it, kindly eyes which a ready smile thinned into more slits, and a hushed and gentle tone of voice- all of which was in unexpected contrast to the ferocious image derived from his samurai films. But then, it is not unusual to find schizophrenics among people of the theatrical profession, and I knew Kurosawa had samurai blood in him. I had visions of his unbridled other self, pitching into that scene of combat with all the controlled fury of a samurai himself.”

Writing about everything that comes to my mind from whatever little exposure that I’ve had of Akira Kurosawa would be beyond the scope of this article and perhaps even this blog. I can hardly imagine what I would write once I’ve seen almost all of his work. I suspect that would reach beyond the scope of the internet itself. While this little exaggeration may sound overblown, in the world of Akira Kurosawa, it is merely a bankable parameter for the perfectionist.

Here are more pictures of the great master:

*This article has been posted in conjunction with the Kurosawa Blogathon happening over at Film Squish.

Bibliography

• Kurosawa, Akira: Something Like an Autobiography (1982)
• Ray, Satyajit: Our Films, Their Films (1976)
• Robinson, Andrew: Satyajit Ray- The Inner Eye (1989)
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Kurosawa

Technorati Tags: Kurosawa, The Seven Samurai, Kajiro, Yamamoto, Japan, filmmaking, Rashomon, Ran, The Throne of Blood, The Bad Sleep Well, Kagemusha, Palme D’or, Satyajit Ray, Akira