Given the expanse of the Siberian wilderness as his cinematic canvas, Akira Kurosawa responds with the visually hypnotic, deeply affecting portrait of nature, friendship, and survival in Dersu Uzala. Based on the journals of Russian explorer Vladimir Arseniev, the film opens to a forest that is being cleared for development, and Arseniev searching for an […]
High and Low never wavers under the assured direction of Akira Kurosawa. It is, all at once: a procedural crime story, a social commentary on the casualties of industrialization, the redemption of a man’s soul. A wealthy executive, Gondo (Toshiro Mifune), hosts an informal board meeting in his insular residence atop a hill, overlooking the […]
In 16th century Japan, protracted feudal wars have created a prevailing sense of lawlessness. Bandits have organized into formidable armies that scavenge the countryside in search of villages to loot. One morning, a band of thieves arrive at the outskirts of a farming community, but is persuaded to delay their attack until the barley has […]
Akira Kurosawa uses the camera to distance himself from his subject. In Ikiru, the camera serves as the mirror to his soul. Ikiru is the subtly poignant and heartbreaking story of Kanji Watanabi (Takashi Shimura), a middle aged government bureaucrat who has been diagnosed with terminal gastric cancer. Realizing that he has squandered his life […]
Although annotated with a running time of 98 minutes, the print for Uwe Jens Krafft’s Raid on the Bergen Express that was screened for the program turned out to be a British cut of the film that clocked in at slightly less than one hour. With that reservation noted, it is difficult to assess the […]
Like Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Damjan Kozole’s Spare Parts is imbued with a metaphoric yellow haze, a contamination that has tainted the souls of those who move in the periphery of everyday inhumanity and despair. Opening with a seemingly mundane, bookending episode of a mentor meeting his assistant for the first time at a […]