Akira Kurosawa An Auteur
Brief Background on Akira Kurosawa
Son of an army officer, Akira Kurosawa studied art before gravitating to film as a means to support himself. His series of films cut across genres from crime thrillers to period dramas.
To give a background on how Akira Kurosawa directed his films, he frequently used the wipe effect to fade from one scene to another, a cinematic effect that was popularized by the Star Wars Trilogy. Aside from being a filmmaker. he also had training as a painter, and he usually storyboarded his films as a full scale-painting and uses weather to heighten mood of a specific scene (Brooke , Mini Biography).
The Works of Akira Kurosawa
Dersu Uzala
Most of Kurosawas films were shot in Japan, but this one was shot entirely in Siberia, Russia. Instead of an epic action picture, his passion as a storyteller the drama of pure humanity. can be observed in this film.The movie Dersu Uzala basically tells the story of an unusual friendship between a Russian captain and a nomadic tribal hunter named Dersu and how the latter helps the former and his team to handle the many obstacles in the Siberian wilderness. The vastness of the Siberian wilderness in this movie provides a new canvass for the once painter. He combines the method of shooting a big, spacious environment in the wild with a deep character study. Many of his films have a great deal of spectacle, and he is perhaps known best for his samurai films, but there is none of those in this movie.
As a powerful visual stylist, Kurosawa crafted some of his most striking imageries in this film especially in the scene that portrays a numinous, eerily lit confrontation with a tiger. Another scene which captured my attention is where Dersu rescues his Russian friend from a blizzard when they are stuck on a frozen lake. Including a blizzard in the setting illustrates his directorial approach in intensifying moods using weather. One can also notice the cinematography of this film the long, lingering shots of the landscape, the forest, rivers, and the mountains.
It is also important to note that Kurosawa is the writer of this film. should have mentioned this at the beginning of this section The story itself has a superb appeal that lasts until the last act where the film reaches an intensely tragic plane, taking the plot to another level to almost spiritual in nature and leaving the viewers in awe.
Ran
The film Ran, both written and directed by Kurosawa, appears to be a rough adaptation of Shakespeares King Lear. The movie tells the story of three sons dealing with the passing of an era as their warlord father tries to find peace in his last years by dividing his empire among them. It retains all the themes of the original play but with varied ideas added by Kurosawa, such as the radical film language which works with certain imageries of colors, rapid cut sequences, and a sophisticated sound design.
One can see in this film that Kurosawa is greatly interested in the responsibility of the leader and the ironies of an autocratic system. The viewers can also feel the violence of the film as Kurosawa painted the sets with blood in effect would look horrible and dehumanizing. He always creates images using either color to enhance the films tone or simply black and white to portray depth in almost all of his films. In Ran, however, Kurosawa employs his masterful skill with the camera as each shot seems to be planned to precision and each cut is made for a purpose. Even the choreography and blocking of each scene is simple yet powerful. The first battle, which is the films turning point, is the most horrifying yet strangely beautiful battle ever filmed, taking the audience to a place they would not rather explore on their own.
As viewed in the directors perspective that in a world of cruelty, moments within the horror can have beauty. Even the moment when the emperor (Hidetora) actions achieve his madness is one of surpassing beauty.
At times of chaos, it seems that nature responds to reveal a religious entity. By having instances of meaningful emptiness, the film allows the viewers to have moments of reflection. Also, the pristine use of color in the movie really makes it a wonderful piece of art. Each brother in the movie has his own color, and when the colors of the brothers clash, it reveals the essence of art. As with his other period pieces, Kurosawa pays attention to all the little details, making every scene visually enticing and stunning. Ran is certainly a magnificent work of a director and painter who knows how to mix colors to create such a fine masterpiece.
Last Man Standing
In the film Last Man Standing, Kurosawa was not the director but he had a significant contribution to the story. A remake of his previous work Yojimbo (1961), this movie is set during the prohibition era of the 1920s on a small town of Jericho, Texas. It tells the story of a man just passing through this town named John Smith who gets targeted by one of the local mobs and decides to use the situation to his advantage and make money. After watching a lot of Akira Kurosawas films, one would be able to point out that he did not direct this film. The noir style of the film is supposed to be telling the story as it goes, but the narration is simply not that good at all. Despite the potential of the concept, especially the idea of the story created by Kurosawa, the film lacks depth, even though the Director (Walter Hill) did a good job of creating a convincing dry atmosphere of simmering tension in the film. However, the material itself lacks is as not sharp or slick as it needed to be. The location is unclean and desolate compared to the portrait-like films Kurosawa used to make. In Yojimbo, the Japanese Samurai looks larger than life by the crafty camera technique used by Kurosawa himself, the viewers can see and feel the main characters actions and decide whether it is heroic or a game being played by a bored warrior. The wonderful images strewn across the film and skillful direction that keeps the pace of the storytelling tight. Although Last Man Standing is not that bad, it has some quite familiar cinematography in terms of some of the colors or visual styles. There is one opening where John Smith (Bruce Willis) spins his empty whiskey bottle on the ground to decide which road to take a clear reference to Kurosawas actor Toshiro Mifune throwing a stick to the air to decide on his path. All things considered, the film does not come close to Yojimbo, but it is a decent remake based on Akira Kurosawas story.
Conclusion
Over the decades, Akira Kurosawa has always maintained his own directing style and approach of a story and characters, for this he got acclaimed mostly throughout his early career. He has his own personal style by focusing on the human traits of the characters, such as their emotions and frailties, as well as on the picturesque landscapes and settings, beautiful visual imagery and could be dark and gloomy depending on its films theme.
He also has creative control over his work from the script and the actual shooting of the film to the editing. His role encompasses the coaching of the actors, the cinematography, the sound recording, the art direction, the music, the editing and dubbing, and the sound mixing. He does not separate those elements as independent, but sees them as melting together under the heading of direction. These may be small components of facts that define Akira Kurosawa, but after viewing his films, one would see his perfectionist tendencies in each scene. It seems it has an imaginary indelible trademark by the one and only Akira Kurosawa.
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