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5.0 out of 5 stars
How To See Beauty, January 5, 2006
In 1951 the Shochiku film studio released Akira Kurosawa's adaptation of Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" in a much-cut and rather mangled form. It flopped, and when Shockiku insisted the film be cut it again...Kurosawa said, "Next time cut it down the middle...lengthwise!" In other words, cutting would destroy the film. Anyway, the original Kurosawa-cut version was lost, and what remains is this much-pared-down version....
And, somehow, like a damaged soul, it is unbelievably affecting. It is a film that shows great nobility of spirit, contrasted against the tragic consequences of one's choices and actions based on fear, loathing, avarice, hate, and yes, love.
What a strange film! Kurosawa chose Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's islands, and the most European-like. The houses look like European houses, and the weather! Snow covers the windowsills and blows in from open doors. What a desolate and deeply affecting visual...the windows with crescents of snow, while inside, near a stove, the tragic human dramas unfold.
Utterly fascinating. I cannot tell you how lovely and strange and disturbing a film this is! Maybe that overlay of Christianity, transplanted to Buddhism, is able to take the Christ-like central "Prince Myishkin" figure into a new realm of possibility of meaning: a universal secular application of the principle of loving one another.
Suddenly, in this film, everything is re-made: new and at the same time resonant of our own shared histories.
I have a memory of being in the Peter and Paul fortress in St. Petersberg and seeing a cell, and being told that Dostoevsky had been imprisoned, brought before a firing squad, blindfolded, the shots rang out...but the whole thing had been a cruel joke..they had not shot the novelist, he had been reprieved.
I know that Dostoevsky lived in St. Peteresberg, and I know that he had been in the army, and that he suffered from epilepsy and this reprieve from death, well, it would be pretty much the history (or to use film lingo, "backstory") of the central character in "The Idiot".
The acting is the kind of heated, overwrought acting you might expect in a silent film (and this is not to belittle the acting..! A silent film must communicate visually, and here, Kurosawa does the nearly impossible: allows us to enter into the pained and tortured souls of the characters through their eyes and how they hold their bodies, how they react to one another. These are people at the edge of sanity, desperate and full of self-loathing and fear. Their passions, even, are a source of pain. And, you will feel it, viscerally!).
Setsuko Hara is amazing. You will never see her like this in an Ozu film! Imperious, tortured.
Despite some awareness that the film was damaged and incomplete
(according to Kurosawa's original vision), and despite a disagreeable
encounter with the initial scenes where there are abrupt cuts, intertitles as elipses for lost footage, and some jumpy discontinuity-I attribute most of this to Shochiku's insistence on paring down of the film for time, and find, that, by the second half of the film, I've been won over, completely, and haunted and deeply moved.
In comparing this with another Kurosawa adaption of a Russian author;
Gorky's "The Lower Depths", one is immediately aware of the different
approach, and the masterful handling of the latter is so easeful and sure. In comparison, "The Idiot" is flawed, difficult.
But, for all it's flaws, I found "The Idiot" to be one of the best films I have ever seen!
Masayuki Mori, as the Prince Myishkin character (Kameda in the film) is deeply affecting. It is the surprise of his sudden smile, coming like sun on snow, or a light in a dark room, of his humility when he's said something painfully honest that shocks everyone, and he puts his hands to his head and apologizes..he is "damaged", and meant no harm by his words. In the scene where he takes the now-mad Toshiro Mifune's head in his hands (Mifune plays Akama..the Rogozhin character from the novel) his hands, even, seem to be imbued with a gentle love. By that point in the film, though, I completely believe in him! So beautiful, those deep, pained and loving eyes!
Setusko Hara, as Taeko (the Nastasya character in the novel) is utterly unlike anything we've seen in Ozu! You know, every short synopsis of the novel mentions the character as capricious...but, here, in this film, it so much more!!! We feel her motivations, her pain, her fury and desperation. We especially feel her pain through Mori's eyes. When she is at the point of tears, forcing Mori to choose her over another...there is an electricity...she holds her head back proudly, trying not to cry...imperiously raising her hand and telling Mori he must choose her and abandon his other love...and there is so much tension, everyone is at the breaking point, and it is truly her face, at this moment that terrifies! I have never seen her so desperate and in such pain! She is magnificent, heartbreaking.
Takashi Shimura is here, and it's always good to see him! Bokuzen Hidari, with a "Hitler-esque" moustache is here...being funny, as usual...the mom from "Tokyo Story" is here-her solid frame, those wonderful eyes (she feels like a family friend, doesn't she? Everyone has an aunt or mom or relative like her), and good 'old Minoru Chiaki, playing an uncharacteristically crummy guy (he's usually loveable in most of his roles).
This film has suffered from a bad rap. If you really love film, this is brilliant, so see it without prejuduice, forget what anyone might have told you about it, just remember the ways in which films are different from books, and remember that Kurosawa loved the book deeply, and trust him-he was even a better director than you thought he was.
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