Customer Reviews

Dersu Uzala - Collection Edition

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Out of many films Kurosawa made I find this film my favorite. When the film premiered in United States, I went to the theater at least five times. Thereafter, I purchased VHS tape version and I watched over and over to the point the tape was no longer watchable.

I went to search for DVD version and as it turned there were two version. This one (released by Ruscico) and the one released by King Video. You can still buy one from King Video but from reviews given over there it is not a good copy.

The one released by Ruscico was exactly same as the one I saw at the theater. It is just wonderful to be able to see it in DVD. If Blu-Ray version comes out I will definitely buy it. Unfortunately, Amazon no longer carry the Ruscico version so searching auction site may be the only way for you to find a copy.

This DVD is definitely one of my treasured one.

In the early 1970s, Akira Kurosawa was already celebrated as a total genius and one of the most important movie directors ever. Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Federico Fellini, Roman Polanski, Robert Altman, Ingmar Bergman and many others are or were his devout fans. But at that moment everything seemed to be going wrong for him. Despised by his fellow countrymen, who accused him of making films to please Western tastes, unable to secure financing for his films, health failing, a suicide attempt, depression...

Hearing of that, an unlikely source asked him if he was willing to make a film for them: the Soviets. Without much choice and wanting to be productive again, Kurosawa accepted and went to Moscow. In spite of all the predictable ideological and political interference, it was at Mosfilm that he made this triumphal comeback and absolute masterpiece, which very deservedly won the 1976 Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film.

Kurosawa's flawless and perfectionist attention to the least aesthetic details, combined to the breathtaking wild landscapes of the Russian Far East, make this film a visually jaw-dropping experience from the first to the last shot. It is also impossible not to fall in love with the title character, a native hunter from a Siberian nomadic ethnicity, the Nanai (then called the "Gold"), who taught an explorer from the Tsarist army in the first decade of the 20th century how to survive, interact and respect nature. And amid all that, a story of friendship, respect, maybe even Socratic love (without any undertone) between two men who were culturally worlds apart, but their humanity brought them together. The story is real, Dersu really existed and his story is told in the officer's memoirs, on which the screenplay was based.

Not only didn't "Dersu Uzala" get old after more than three decades, but it feels fresher than ever. Kurosawa seemed prescient of what would be in the world's agenda many years later. Ecology, rethinking of our relationship with nature? It's there. Inter-ethnic tolerance and respect? It's there. Solidarity rather than violence? It's there - nature itself is much more violent in this film than men are. But everything is presented with subtlety, without speeches, without arrogance, and especially without syrupy cheesiness. Or can you imagine Kurosawa making anything even remotely kitsch? And take the many unforgettable scenes, like the terrifying snowstorm and the symbolism of the Siberian tiger as a representation of the forces of nature themselves.

This Russian DVD edition has a somewhat disappointing image quality, especially for such a visually magnificent film, but it is guaranteed to be the integral original work. Audio is in Russian, but there are subtitles in scores of languages. Considering this must be one of the few editions available and in many cases the only chance for new generations to get to know this extraordinary movie, go for it!