Customer Reviews

No Regrets for Our Youth [VHS]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"No Regrets for our Youth" is a drastically different film that I had assumed from the box cover and title. It gives every appearance of a winsome love story, full of smiles and charming tragedies. It is, instead, a political powerhouse that speaks of sacrifice, betrayal of ideals and iron will in the face of adversity. The particular cause in this film is the rise of the militarists in Japan, and the suppression of academic freedom.

The story is a love-triangle between three people, Noge, the driven political idealist, Itokawa, the practical idealist, and Yukie, the lovely daughter of a college professor who has been sacrificed on the political alter. Yukie must chose between a life of suffering with Noge, or a life of relative comfort with Itokawa, knowing that to chose him means betraying the ideals that her father suffered for.

Setusko Hara, known in Japan as the "Eternal Virgin," is simply incredible in "No Regrets for our Youth." I am more accustomed to seeing her in Ozu's films, playing the light-hearted and affectionate daughter. Here, she shows incredible strength in body and spirit, finding her heart by hard labor in a farmer's field. Kurosawa obviously saw something in her that Ozu did not, and brought out a surprising side to the lovely and popular actress.

"No Regrets for our Youth" is a political film, a feminist film, and a film of high ideals. It is also a great film to watch. Kurosawa tried to balance his message with his entertainment, and this film is heavier on the message than his later works, but it still shows his style and flare, and is completely enjoyable.

It's often said Kurosawa's films just discribe "men". Looking at other works, I have to say that kind of critisim is agreeable to a certain degree. (although I love his films) However, this "No Regrets for Our Youth" is quite different. It shows us how one young woman gets independent under a terrible circumstance, World War Two. She never gives up her brief whatever happens. I'm sure this film shows different aspect from other Kurosawas. Pls remeber this was made just after Japan was defeated by U.S. and its allies. I assume a lot of Japanese must have been given energy for living.

I wanted Kurosawa-san to have directed more files like this.

Japan's greatest director, Akira Kurosawa, broke with the onus of having worked under Japan's fascist government with this exposition-heavy politcal melodrama, detailing the suppression of the anti-militarist student movement of the 1930s, and Japan's descent into dictatorship. A classic love triangle plays out on a politcal stage; the woman in its center prefers the romantic pro-democracy activist, and follows her heart in a way which recaptures lost Japanese honor and simplicity. It's also an interesting feminist parable, about a determined young woman who gives up social privilege to gain own independence. The film is rather talky and may lose those who don't have at least a passing familiarity with Japan's 1930s invasion of Manchuria, and the nation's inexorable march into World War II. But even when applying himself to reverse propaganda, Kurosawa is capable of delicious cinematic poetry. Worth checking out, although it's admittedly no "Ran."

This is a fantastic early work that showcases Kurosawa's masterful grasp of the cinematic frame and editing. A postwar piece ('46) about the oppressive state during wartime Japan (circa 1941), its messages don't err from the overtly propagandic (return to rural peasantry,a woman's duty to her husband's family even in widowhood, the sanctified dead revolutionary, etc.) but the effect is still enormously powerful. The title of the film is whispered to haunting effects during the most trying segments -- for Yukie, the female protagonist -- of the story.

Last night I watched "No Regrets for Our Youth"-and, when the quick-dissolve succession of still shots of Setsuko Hara posing against the door flashed by, I suddenly realized that I had seen this film on the big screen some 30 years ago. I had remembered that series of shots against the door: it had struck me as strange at the time, and in the dark, with the face of Hara looming enormously, and the quick succession of images of Hara in poses of emotional struggle and uncertainty, it read as something from a silent picture melodrama. Well, 30 years, and one does a gain a bit of experience...I know now that Kurosawa greatly admired silent film.

The film's purported political content was freedom of speech and
thought, and Japan's rising militarism-beginning with the university (and extending into the larger political context as students move into the working world) and is, as in many Kurosawa films, dramatized through the individual and
individual choice.

The love story surrounding Setsuko Hara and her two suitors, their individual choices, emotions and relative political affiliations is a large part of the film's running time.

I think that I may have dismissed the
political issues as somewhat antiquated, as well. After all, we're not in a war, and we have intellectual freedom rules at university.

Oh..wait a minute...we are in a war. And, this morning, driving to the university, listening to National Public Radio, I heard a chilling story that made "No regrets for Our Youth" seem much more timely...!

Perhaps you've read about the UCLA Bruin Alumni Association? They are paying students to "spy" on "left-wing, liberal" professors. Students are instructed to take notes and make recordings of the "Dirty Thirty"-professors suspected of holding left-leaning views.

Interesting that Kurosawa's film, made in 1949 is relevant to 2006.

"No Regrets for our Youth" is probably Kurosawa's first important movie. The setting is 1930's and 1940's Japan. The military has taken control of the country, an event that has a profound impact on the characters in this film. Setsuko Hara gives an outstanding performance as Yukie, the spoiled professor's daughter whose sufferings lead to self-discovery. Some have called this film a feminist drama, a rarity for Kurosawa. But it's also a movie about the choices we make in life. Yukie has two suitors, Itokawa and Noge. She knows she will have a safe but boring life if she marries Itokawa, and a stormy but exciting one if she chooses Noge. I won't give away any more of the plot. But I will tell you the farm scenes will be a real eye-opener for those of you who are familiar with Setsuko Hara's roles as the sweet daughter in films by Yasujiro Ozu.

**This review is for the all-region DVD version currently only available in Asia**

I could hardly believe the actress playing the mercurial Yukie would soon be playing the serene and self-effacing Noriko in Yasujiro Ozu's home drama classics such as "Early Summer" and "Tokyo Story". Such was Setsuko Hara's versatility and malleability that she could move easily between Ozu's saintly goddess and Akira Kurosawa's passionate, reluctant heroine in this 1946 anti-war melodrama. In his first post-WWII film and the only one he ever made focused on a female protagonist, Kurosawa (with co-writer Eijirô Hisaita) has fashioned an emotionally ripe, politically charged and time-spanning story around Yukie, the daughter of a college professor, a one-time idealist who loses his job in face of the growing fascism engulfing Japan in 1933. Beautiful and skating precariously on the surface of her life, she finds herself caught between two men, both former students of her father - Noge, the son of peasant rice farmers, who becomes a secretive anti-war activist, and Itokawa, the conservative prosecutor and a symbol of the passive conformity that allowed Japan to enter a no-win war. Yukie is excited by Noge's political passion, and they begin an intense, inevitably short-lived affair. When Noge goes to prison, she becomes politically enlightened to Japan's oppressive state, and after he dies, she decides to take his ashes to his parents and stay with them to work the fields. She endures a great deal of hardship, both from his uncaring parents and neighbors, who harass the family of a "traitor". Against the odds, Yukie endures and triumphs and despite a brief sojourn back to Kyoto, realizes her life is far more fulfilling with the peasants.

Much of the plot is rather convoluted and the storyline jumpy, as the politically motivated Kurosawa seems more interested in drawing certain emotional responses from the viewer. Clarity is only a secondary consideration here, as he busily applies much of the visual flair that he would exhibit with greater impact in his later masterworks like "Rashomon" and "Seven Samurai". Even at this early stage in his directorial career (it's only his fifth film), there are a number of his stylistic touches evident, such as a series of quick freeze shots to illustrate Yukie's traumatized response behind a closed door to Noge's surprise departure; the use of a slow exposure camera that causes an unearthly (and sometimes irritating) blurring effect when people are in motion; people lying in a pastoral setting staring skywards (mimicked recently by Chinese filmmakers like Yimou Zhang); Yukie's oddly exaggerated, out-of-sync piano playing; and large crowds rushing down steps in an Eisenstein-like manner. However, the film gains real emotional heft toward the end when Yukie struggles in the rice fields with Noge's mother (played almost unrecognizably by another Ozu regular, Haruko Sugimura) under Yukie's mantra of the dead husband/son, "No regrets in my life, no regrets whatsoever". It's a moving sequence which brings the story to its resonant conclusion.

Proving why she was one of Japan's favorite post-WWII film stars, Hara is superb in showing Yukie's initial flightiness and evolving political consciousness. The other performances are reasonable but hardly as memorable - Susumu Fujita as Noge, Akitake Kono as Itokawa (whom Yukie rejects at the end as unworthy to know where Noge's grave is due likely to his pro-war stance) and Denjiro Okochi as Yukie's father. The real bad news, however, is that the video transfer to DVD in this release is often atrocious. Some scenes, such as Yukie working in the rice fields at night, are completely blacked out on the screen for lengthy periods. Even worse, the English translation subtitles are woefully lacking and required me to replay a number of scenes several times to understand the gist of conversations between characters. Oddly, key characters have been inexplicably renamed in the subtitles - Yukie is referred to as "Hun" and Noge as "Wild". The net result compromises the quality of the film considerably, and I hope it's on the future release list of the Criterion Collection to restore the film and provide a more accurate translation. Still, the combination of the illustrious Kurosawa and the incandescent Hara is certainly compelling enough to warrant a recommendation from me.