At the gates of Rashōmon

If the works of one — and only one — filmmaker had to be passed on to a distant future civilization as a legacy of what we would have achieved in the art of great cinema, then the choice would be as clear-cut as the clean slash left on a bamboo stem by the Katana blade of a seasoned Samurai.

One man rises above the fray to claim legendary status among the fine fleur du 7ème art. That man was born in Tokyo on March 23, 1910, and he lived to create some of the greatest movies of all times. Films that inspired other movie directors throughout the world in shaping our collective cinematic conciousness.

In this post, we'll delve into the works of filmmaker genius Akira Kurosawa whose influence still permeates TV screens in the West and in the East.

Da man!

Don't mess with spaghetti...

Kurosawa is the grand master of Samuraï movies. Little known fact: that genre heavily inspired its counterpart in the West, namely spaghetti westerns. If you're a fan of For a Fistful of Dollars or The Magnificent Seven, then you are a Kurosawa fan without knowing it. But I digress. We'll get to the spaghetti later.

Back to the man. Kurosawa was a prolific filmmaker and his career spanned nearly three decades. As a young man, he witnessed the pre- and post-war eras of Japan. Crude realism and bleakness are the canvas against which his films are thrown. Despite the roughness of it, this melancholy is beautifully and delicately interwoven into the fabric of human nature laid bare. Kurosawa's movies are timeless windows into the Japanese soul, its ideals of grandeur and the cruel irony of life's tricks. 

Time to explore some of Kurosawa's greatest masterpieces in our artistic quest for truth.

In 1950 came Rashōmon, the movie that first drew worldwide attention on Japan's potential to influence arts & culture on a global scale. The story of Rashōmon is in essence that of multifaceted reality or that of perspective and perception. Without revealing too much of the plot, Rashōmon is the story of four stories resulting from the extremely unfortunate encounter between a wayward rogue, a samurai and his spouse, and a passer-by. Four contradictory stories will emerge out of this single event, yet all of them true from the perspective of its narrator. How can four people perceive the same turn of events differently? The movie tackled this issue with such brio that it gave rise to the concept of the Rashōmon effect in journalism as to the nature of truth(s).

Note: Masaki Kobayashi's Harakiri (1962) also comes to mind when talking about the impact of perspective and perception in cinematographic storytelling. But that's a story for another day.

Kurosawa's most famous film is probably the Seven Samurai (1954), which is, as the name suggests, the story of seven Samurai coming to the rescue of the weak and giving the baddies a tougher chew than expected. The cast of the Seven Samurai included actors of tremendous talent of the likes of Takashi Shimura and Toshirô Mifune. Despite being filmed over 60 years ago, you can still enjoy it today as one of the best movies you'll ever watch.

The Beast Unleashed

One cannot talk about Kurosawa movies without mentioning Toshirô Mifune, the actor whose incredible screen presence made these movies come to life. Toshirô Mifune takes the lead in Yojimbo (1961) as a clever and ballsy ronin for the hire, who enters a village and cunningly plays two local gangs against each other in a bid to free the people of their tyranny.

Whether a lawless vagabond or an unsung lonesome hero, Toshiro Mifune will get under your skin. I've never seen such animality on screen. Toshirô, he's the man, he's the animal - he's the first manimal.

A Manimal screen presence
that will not be chained

Toshirô Mifune perfectly grasps the essence of the unbound beast, whether for good or bad.

The actor's relationship with Kurosawa despite their shared success was a rollercoaster ride. One thing however always remained true, their encounter gave rise to perfection made into film.

As the filmmaker once said of his muse: "I am proud of nothing I have done other than with him."



To conclude this blogpost, here's an interesting video I've found which gives insight into Kurosawa's mastery in the use of frames for his vivid visual storytelling.