I Live in Fear, or, Record of a Living Being

Family counsel(ing)

It had been too long since a Kurosawa viewing, and certainly too long since a first-time viewing. Hadn’t seen the alternately titled I Live In Fear or Record of a Living Being on account of its exclusion from Criterion’s standard-disc collection and subsequent inclusion in the Eclipse set “Postwar Kurosawa.” Ultimately, this is probably more fitting, as the film is distinctly “postwar”; it’s not only situated in that era, but its narrative revolves around psychological fallout from wartime trauma. One forgets how tight, cohesive, and technically flawless are most of Kurosawa’s films, and this one is no exception. The director believed that a good film should be interesting and easy to understand. Kurosawa had a remarkable ability to make films that fit those terms without being simplistic. I Live In Fear is, in one sense, Kurosawa’s most Ozu-like film; the camera work is static and the spatial settings are contemporary and largely restricted to the domestic sphere. Unlike many Ozu films, however, the family patriarch is not well-respected, although here the question of whether he should be respected is central. (Ozu tends to take it more for granted that the older generation is getting the shaft from their kids.)

Beyond invididual identity

Other postwar Kurosawa films  interact with similar themes as I Live In Fear, but they do so much less overtly. The threat of nuclear annihilation and its accompanying myopia is confronted head-on in this film. The question essentially is whether it’s insane to worry about it or insanely ignorant not to worry about it. The film begins and (basically) ends with the viewer sutured to Takashi Shimura’s character, an everyman, a dentist, a typical but upstanding citizen who does his community a service by working in a judicial role on a family court. In the film’s background is his son, a fellow dentist working at his father’s practice who embodies the film’s worry that the younger generation lives for the moment and doesn’t take responsibility beyond the individual level. This is a major Kurosawa theme, one that he visits directly in films like Stray Dog and High and Low. Individual moral responsibility is critical; however, part and parcel to it is collective, national responsibility, a characteristic that the Japanese people arguably neglected or lost following (and arguably as a result of) the postwar US occupation. At one point the son of Shimura’s character explicitly verbalizes his rejection of community responsibility. He stands opposed to his father, whose willing participation on a family council sets him apart as something of a quiet postwar hero of Japan. Kurosawa maintains a strikingly consistent balance in his films of this period (and perhaps beyond) between individual moral responsibility and greater social ethics.

The Everyman

There’s no heroic figure in this film, though, although Shimura’s character comes closest. His ultimate questioning as to what to do and how to live puts him in rather neutral territory. While we are witness to the family’s despicable treatment and disrespect of their father, he is certainly no saint. Aside from his obsession with the threat of the bomb, he openly has children with three mistresses, two of whom remain part of his life. He even insists on bringing his illegitimate families with him to Brazil, an arbitrary destination that, he is convinced, is safe from the bomb threat. While not a primary focus of the film, this aspect of the father’s life openly and clearly keeps the viewer from pitying him too much or viewing him as an essentially good person. The unwanted kindness that he forces upon his family seems ultimately self-centered. He is more concerned with how he is perceived and with maintaining his status as a successful patriarch than he is of what is reasonable or best for his family. This ranges from his marital infidelities to his refusal to listen to his sons and daughters. Moreover, the fact that most of his children do not respect him suggests that his parenting hasn’t commanded respect from them. Lest we get the wrong idea, Kurosawa doesn’t romanticize the past. It’s not as if prewar Japan is an Eden to regain. As for the future, it’s left open and uncertain. Concerns are raised, but no actions are taken. On the contrary, inaction itself seems to drive the family patriarch literally insane. Would they only have heeded his original fears, whether legitimate or not, the family may have retained its integrity. The role of well-meaning citizens acting as judges in family courts may be inept, as some of them are willing to admit. Still, this doesn’t answer the lingering question of what to do in response to this numinous threat. The film ends by turning the question toward the audience, and expanding it past the mere question of the bomb. Even more overarching questions of individual social and moral responsibility become central, in classic Kurosawa fashion.

Bomb's-Eye View

Family paperwork

Heated strife

Guilty til proven insane

Ominous

Pater familias

Lost it

Out of the silent planet

Yojimbo: An Itchy and Scratchy Show

Mountainous

Saw this one the other week at the Stanford Theatre during the wonderful Kurosawa run (which is not yet over). First time to have seen it in 35mm, which was pure joy. This may be the best thing I’ve ever seen on the big screen. (Contrary to today’s commonplace, it’s camerawork, not the appearance of camerawork that sells you; sorry, Avatar.) More than ever the film feels like a parable for film itself; particularly for Kurosawa as a filmmaker. Yoshimoto suggests this in his chapter on the film, but the fact becomes plainer and plainer upon each viewing. Sanjuro (Mifune) is a ronin, competent, fierce, but also playful – how does this not also describe Kurosawa? At this point in his career Kurosawa had more freedom than he knew what to do with, such that he could practically pick up a stick, toss it up in the air, and follow the left fork in the road since the stick pointed that way. Sanjuro arrives in a town where there are two feuding clans, not unlike Toho and Daiei studios in Japan, between which Kurosawa moved more than once. Sanjuro’s ascent to the top of the tower to watch the two clans duke it out for his own amusement ends up as a sort of self-effacement on Kurosawa’s part. He ends up showing the vacuity of such childishness.

Not the right way

The most overt parallel, perhaps, is in the departure of the resident samurai (instructor) upon Sanjuro’s arrival. (Can’t remember, but I think Stephen Prince pointed this out.) The old instructor old stuff now, past his prime and in need of replacement. The actor who plays him is Susumu Fujita, Kurosawa’s protagonist in his old samurai films Sanshiro Sugata and the sequel to it. Fujita, who also starred in No Regrets for Our Youth and The Men Who Tread on Tiger’s Tail back in the 40s, makes an appearance in The Hidden Fortress and is soundly defeated in a duel by Mifune’s character. Here in Yojimbo Kurosawa is cementing Mifune’s status not only as his actor of choice, but as his new kind of samurai. Who better, then, to jump the fence and run away before the battle begins than Fujita? The kindly farewell wave shared between the old samurai/actor and the new is as overt a nod we’re going to get. Unkempt, itchy, and always with a hankering for some sake and rice, Sanjuro is the new image of the updated samurai.

Sayonara

One thing Sanjuro serves to illustrate is that stupid in-fighting is a thing of the past, along with taking oneself too seriously. How better to teach these amateurs than to use their own weapon (violence) against them by means of their tool of choice (ignorance). In so doing, Kurosawa illustrates the failure of traditional jidai-geki films to depict violence with honesty. In those films, violence was rendered harmless in the long run: no blood, no severed limbs, no flesh-slicing sound effects. In Yojimbo Kurosawa begins a new tradition (one he would grow to regret trailblazing) of realistic violence. The irony, of course, is that Kurosawa’s goal was to repel viewers, not attract them to such acts. Kurosawa is always called a humanist, and not without good reason. An early shot in Yojimbo has a stray dog (little nod there) with a human hand in its mouth trotting casually through town, as if to welcome Sanjuro with a sampling of what he’ll get to experience after spending some time there. And Sanjuro adapts effectively: the first thing he does with his sword is amputate an arm.

The famous and overwhelmingly innovative photography of this film is quite consistent with the main ideas of the film, along with its historical context. We’re now very post-war, indeed, and Japan’s problems now have to do with modernization and Westernization at a whole new level. The Japanese as a people were defined by problems that got them involved in WWII, and they were subsequently humiliated and rebuilt as a nation afterward. Now, Japan as a nation was going head-first into the modern era – about to host the World’s Fair in Tokyo in a couple years – again blindly submitting to the idea of what “Japan” was supposed to be. Kurosawa’s concerns had to do with the lack of the individual in Japanese society, the absence of the single voice (and single voices!) who would challenge the status quo, think independently and creatively, and challenge the notion(s) prevalent of where Japan was headed. Sanjuro is just that character, though an imperfect one. He’s not idealized, though as “humanist” it might have been a temptation for Kurosawa to idealize his hero. Rather, we have a man who survived the previous age (little mentions are made about the era preceding this film’s diegetic timeline) and, masterless, wandered the land finding patches of inept and ignorant people to teach and toy with.

Deep focus

Swaggering

Secrets

Modernized

A fistful of inspiration

Cowards

Castrated

Sanjuro

So good, and, as old faithful Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto insists, not simply a sequel to Yojimbo! Rather, a totally different film in tone and style; different in kind and not just in degree – sorry, Stephen Prince. And David Desser, dang it, this is so not a “remake” of Shane! Am thoroughly inclined to take Yoshimoto’s word for it (not that he doesn’t supply evidence) that Sanjuro adheres to genre conventions of the samurai film in a way unlike any of Kurosawa’s other works. This isn’t a “Western” like Yojimbo arguably is. As if to signify that at the get-go, Sanjuro’s first scene is staged at a shrine. Spiritual elements were more or less totally absent from Yojimbo, and though they aren’t prominent in Sanjuro either, this is an interesting early appearance.

These thoughts will try to avoid simply contrasting Sanjuro with Yojimbo, but some of the differences are noteworthy. Consider the first shots of Yojimbo: a mountainous landscape, arid and unpopulated, is quickly overcome with the fierce outline of Toshiro Mifune’s shoulders. The music kicks in immediately as Sanjuro walks to a fork in the road, then throws a stick into the air to see which way it will direct him to go when it lands. In Sanjuro, on the other hand, the first shot looks indoors. The first part of the sequence observes eight samurai (but certainly less than “seven”) in the shrine waiting for the provincial superintendent to arrive as they discuss the crisis of corruption in the region. Eventually, out comes Sanjuro from the shadows of an inner room. He grunts and groans, then crawls like a snarling beast coming out of the cage that was foolishly left open. The character may be the same, but in Sanjuro the viewer already knows who he is. Instead of the film introducing him to us, we watch the film introduce him to new characters.

Also worthy of note in this film is the role of women. Kurosawa has been accused of misogyny, in so many words. This has been leveled against him by those who observe that only one of his films features a woman as the front-and-center main character. True enough, Kazuo Hara in No Regrets for Our Youth is the only main female protagonist in Kurosawa’s films. Sanjuro is a nice example, though, of a film that gives women a voice that the male protagonist heeds. After Sanjuro helps the other samurai rescue the kidnapped chamberlain’s wife and daughter, he sits nearby in the barn and listens bemusedly to the women talk about how comfortable it is to lie down in the hay. A short time later, the group is escaping over a rock wall and the chamberlain’s wife refuses to climb over on account of the breach in propriety that it would constitute. Sanjuro eventually gets down on all fours and orders her to use him as a step to climb over the wall. She gives in and submits, apologizing while stepping on the ronin’s back. Later still, Sanjuro and the samurai are trying to find a way to signal one another to invade the superintendent’s house. Sanjuro says dismissively that he will set it on fire. The chamberlain’s wife and daughter come up with an alternative plan that isn’t so destructive: sending camellias down the stream from one property into another. Sanjuro again acquiesces to the demands of the women.

Aside from the content of the women’s words, however, is their composure and attitude during the crises. They’re quick to forget about the dire situation and talk about lying down in hay, allow decorum to inform their actions rather than survival, and design an aesthetically pleasing strategy for action that avoids unnecessary violence. All the while, the chamberlain’s wife describes Sanjuro as an “unsheathed sword.” She says that a good sword remains in its sheath, but he is too hasty to unsheathe himself and kill others. (Think back to Yojimbo and one must concede some truth to this accusation. In that film, Sanjuro played the townspeople as pawns in a game for his own enjoyment, despite the begging of the bartender not to let more people die.)

Yoshimoto points out the significance of Sanjuro’s answer to the women when they ask Sanjuro his age. In Yojimbo he had answered that question with “Thirty year-old mulberry field” (Kuwabatake Sanjuro). In this film, he replies, “Thirty year-old camellia” (Tsubaki Sanjuro), but, he says, he’s really almost forty years old. The women, then, work together to draw out a sort of confession from Sanjuro: he’s not quite acting his age. Yoshimoto also draws attention to a phrase used twice in the film, once uttered by Sanjuro and once later to him: “Yes, you listen to me well – a good boy.” Despite Sanjuro’s leadership over the incompetent samurai, it’s Sanjuro who needs to emerge from his own lingering youth. The women here are the voice of reason and maturity. They’re not trigger-happy or overly worried about death. They will endure their circumstances with dignity and not sacrificing their scruples, but they will remain strategically savvy at the same time.

The film’s last scene is the most infamous, of course. Sanjuro and Hanbei face off in a duel at Hanbei’s insistence. Sanjuro has attempted to leave the town for good without even confronting the chamberlain whose freedom he restored. Not only is Sanjuro a wandering ronin, but presumably at this point he has plenty of food for thought and is considering the prospect of wizening up. Still, Hanbei feels insulted and demands a duel. After arguing for awhile, Sanjuro finally gives in and kills Hanbei with a geyser blast of blood spraying out of him. Apparently this effect was initially accidental thanks to one of the production crew kinking the blood hose. Kurosawa’s decision to keep the scene in the film, however, sends the message twice as powerfully that violence is an undesirable avenue to reconcile disputes. Sanjuro attempts to remain in his sheathe before this bloody end. His decision to fight creates an ambiguous conclusion to the film. Has Sanjuro learned? Will he go on living as an unsheathed youth or will he grow up?

Quickies, Vol. IX

Gilda (dir. Charles Vidor, 1946): The tagline read, “Was there ever a woman like Gilda?” Indeed. Upon a more recent viewing of this long-been favorite, it appears much less textbook Mulvey than previously alleged. Gilda’s sort of the pawn, the tennis ball; but she’s also got more power than the two men/players combined. Would make sense to consider her the substitute for the phallic (or is it?) sword-cane that Ballin wields before Gilda’s arrival and once she’s given him up for Johnny. So the instrument only makes appearances when Ballin is sine-Gilda. She has her breakdown(s), of course, but so do the men, losing their cool in a dual of male compensation. The previously commented-upon facets remain strong and interesting, but this film as a whole stands out for defying simple genre categorization and containing what are easily some of the sauciest and sassiest scenes from 1940s American film. The above clip constitutes perhaps the best female entrance ever in cinema.

Andrei Rublev (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966): Second viewing of this one, and words continue to fall flat next to such images and the ideas, feelings, and thoughts they represent and suggest. After all, the narrative concerns an icon painter whose doubts about what lies on the other side of the images paralyze him from creating said images. How a film, above all other forms of art, could do justice to such a theme seems impossible. Something about the animals in this film, too. Horses, cows, birds – majestic, transcendent, beautiful; bruised, injured, set aflame. 205 minutes, but not a superfluous moment.

Côte d’Azur or Crustacés et Coquillages (dir. Olivier Ducastel & Jacques Martineau, 2005): In many ways this is Feast of Love but in France and done by the French; certainly superior to the U.S. film by its relative lack of pretense. Summer vacation on the Riviera with a Parisian family who is anything but repressed in the broadly moral sense but each of them keeping and suspecting the others of keeping some illicit secrets, a number of them homosexual in nature. Has some very fun moments that seem to be inspired by Bollywood style song-and-dance routines showing up a couple times without warning. Despite the amoral element, a familial cohesion and ultimate optimism reigns that isn’t particularly true to “reality,” but in this little world the film has created, it works okay.

Rhapsody in August (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1991): Would prefer to devote extensive length to this, but alas, time again forbids. Kurosawa is back in classic form here following a string of tragedies (especially Kagemusha and Ran) and then the exquisite Dreams. Rhapsody in August has moments of The Lower Depths and Red Beard that is as “Ozu” as Kurosawa ever gets, and some aesthetic insertions that recall both Dodes’ka-den and Dreams. The outcry that this film was “blaming” the U.S. for dropping the bomb is exceedingly naive and uninformed. Of course, we did drop the bomb, twice, on hundreds of thousands of civilians. But also, this film isn’t wrestling with anything very “American,” per se, but rather with (as is very customary in Kurosawa’s oeuvre) what it is to be Japanese at this particular time in history. Being the late-2oth century, that now means dealing with the post-industrial, postwar, Westernized Japan and the ramifications of having so may of one’s progeny living in the U.S. and mixing blood with Americans. The fact that it isn’t simply “the U.S.” here but Hawaii in particular pointedly alludes to Pearl Harbor, for all those who think Kurosawa was negating any Japanese culpability in the war. Kurosawa highlights the horrific and the heavenly, the ugly and the beautiful, with an amplified and otherworldly palette of textures and colors.

Sleeper (dir. Woody allen, 1973): Still funny, still biting, still smart.

A Fistful of Dollars

For being based on (and according to Akira Kurosawa, the same movie as) Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars contrasts with Kurosawa’s film in important ways. It is no The Magnificent Seven, thankfully. Fistful can be lauded for at least “doing its own thing” in a respectable way instead of simply catering to the Hollywood formula as The Magnificent Seven did, obliterating Seven Samurai in the process. The samurai banded together cohesively and fought for honor, while the cowboys begrudgingly fought together to build up their egos – especially those of the actors playing them. What goes around comes around, presumably, as John Ford’s American Western traversed the Pacific to Japan where Kurosawa reinvented it, and before it could be called a “noodle Western,” Sergio Leone snatched it away to Italy, stuck Clint Eastwood in it, Anglicized the names of all the Italians involved (including himself), and somehow walked away with a new genre: the “spaghetti Western.” This is both fair and unfair: “fair” in that Leone’s film is not Kurosawa’s and needs to be differentiated; “unfair” in that it had appeared to be Leone’s invention, and no one would have suspected that an Italian film set in the American West could have a Japanese samurai movie as its main source. Perhaps no one would have, had Kurosawa not sued Leone. What goes around comes around.

Various social, ethnic, and cultural identities set “the man with no name” apart from “Sanjuro.” (For the sake of clarity, Eastwood’s character will henceforth be named “Eastwood” and Mifune’s character “Mifune.”) Consider Mifune in Yojimbo. He is a ronin, a wandering, masterless samurai who happens to enter the warring town after tossing a stick into the air to decide which fork in the road he should take. This action immediately defines Mifune’s character as unafraid to submit himself to chance. The camera identifies him with the towering mountains behind him and his posture is likened to that of a ferocious cat; his playfulness comes out when he throws the stick into the air and follows its direction. As he enters the town, his status is that of a ronin. The townspeople know this and therefore know, at least generally, his abilities. Ethnically, there’s no difference. Even culturally, all Mifune need do is understand the context of this town, which he is able to do quickly, thanks to the man who feeds him rice and sake.

Eastwood, on the other hand, is not only the man with no name but with no identity other than the ethnic. He is an American in Mexico, a fact that demarcates him on more than a merely local level with the townspeople. Westerns have utilized a particular social identity many times over for its protagonists, one that gives them power and authority not unlike that of Mifune in Yojimbo. This identity is that of the retired sheriff, and the most famous example is probably Wyatt Earp. Leone sets up Eastwood with little discernible background. All we discover at one point is that Eastwood’s altruism toward an unfortunate woman is fueled by a woman in his past. Leone’s insistence at having an American star as the main character may have been motivated chiefly for financial gain, but the effect within the film is ethnic superiority as Eastwood becomes a new kind of figure: an American nomad, not a settler but unsettled, not at home in American territory (presumably because of a seedy past?) or in Mexico. His garb is hybrid, wearing many of the marks of an American Western character but with a poncho covering most of it. It’s as if he’s adopted a new non-American identity, albeit temporarily – the poncho is conveniently removable. On top of that, there’s the hair. While it may seem a trite point to make, the significance of hair in the cinema has finally been demonstrated relatively recently (see Travolta’s and Jackson’s characters in Pulp Fiction). In a land of black mustaches, Eastwood bears a half-beard, another neither-nor aspect of his person/a. At some point in many Westerns (even noir-Westerns such as Treasure of the Sierra Madre), main characters get a much-needed shave. Eastwood’s beard doesn’t seem to grow in this film, however, remaining at that in-between stage.

Eastwood isn’t the only character in Fistful with contempt for the past; his enemies demonstrate their own rejection of the ways of the classical warrior by taking target practice on an old suit of armor. In this regard, Fistful and Yojimbo are fundamentally similar. The antagonist in the latter film introduces a pistol for the first time, rejecting the traditional sword as weapon of choice. Mifune’s prowess with blades (samurai sword and throwing knives) overcomes the Modernism signified by the gun-wielding bad buy. Agility and skill defeat the much lazier though more technologically advanced weapon of the handgun. In Fistful, Eastwood is able to approach his enemy at a sashay pace, fearlessly demanding that his opponent aim for the chest with his more advanced and lethal Winchester rifle. Once out of bullets, Eastwood reveals a plate of iron under his poncho, identifying him with the classical knight in a suit of armor. Though not as agile as Mifune, both of these characters, heretofore having no past, embrace their heritage in order to triumph over their foes. Interestingly, however, Mifune utilizes traditional combat offensively while Eastwood uses it defensively. Watching both films next to each other renders Mifune’s victor impressive and Eastwood’s a bit of a cheat, though a resourceful one.

Rashomon

There are so many views as to the “point” of Rashomon or what stands out most about it that it nearly seems a pointless enterprise to discuss it. The camera work is remarkably novel; Kurosawa’s hiring of Kazuo Miyagawa worked oh so well, with these tracking and panning shots that baffle the mind. During certain shots, the camera seems to be moving in every direction at once. Rarely is movement confined to x, y, or z axes, especially in the forest scenes. Of course the interrogation scenes use the opposite technique: an Ozu-like stationary camera at tatami level. Only the horizontal seems to be emphasized in these shots, with multiple planes existing at any given time. It’s been noted that the camera’s refusal to give the viewer the reverse shot (of the judge/questioner) signifies that the audience stands in the place of the judge. However, the film gives an overall priority not to the “real story,” but both to the lack of a real story and the necessity for human goodness in a dark world.

Here is where the debate resides, though little time will be spent addressing it now. Despite the usefulness of Stephen Prince’s, Keiko McDonald’s, and Donald Richie’s studies of the film, it again seems to be Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto that offers the most reasonable and well-balanced understanding of it. He points out details of note without overemphasizing their weight. For example, there seems to be a theme of the number “3″ in the film: three physical locations (the gate, the forest, the court), three principal characters (the woodcutter, the priest, and the commoner at the gate; the bandit, the samurai, and the samurai’s wife in the forest), a three-day period of time between the court and gate scenes), and the three Chinese characters on the gate (transliterated as “Rashomon”). Also, Yoshimoto notes not only the use of horizontal and vertical space, but the juxtaposition between the two. Though the forest scenes contain horizontal movement, it is the vertical that is emphasized, with shots directly at the sun, shots from below the characters, and the verticality of the trees.

The film has been accused of sentimentality, and here seems to be Yoshimoto’s strongest point. The response to this allegation is a resounding admission, but with qualifications. Critics who have pointed out Kurosawa’s narrative nostalgia almost universally point to the film’s ending with the woodcutter adopting the abandoned child after the commoner has stolen the baby’s blanket. The melodramatic presence of a baby is amplified by its narrative location (at the film’s end) and its didactic purpose (countering the moral vacuum in which the film’s characters live). Yoshimoto adeptly observes, though, that exaggeration by the actors’ performances begins right at the film’s beginning. It’s with repetition, gravitas, and utmost sobriety that the woodcutter and the priest lament the state of the world and humanity when they repeatedly proclaim, “I can’t understand it…I have never heard anything as terrible as this before.” The viewer’s interest is arrested, most likely to be disappointed by what constitutes something so “terrible.” To be sure, in a better world, this narrative would be an awful thing to hear. Accustomed as we are to horrors on a daily basis, a few mistruths revolving around a murder have become commonplace. But this is beside the point. The sentimentality that closes the film is different in neither degree nor kind than that which opens the film and guides the diegetic narrative along its course. This makes the film coherent on its own, even if it presents a world of overreactions and overstatements. The woodcutter’s lost faith in humanity is well-founded, but his active steps toward goodness and compassion reject cynicism and embody a Kierkegaardian ethic. When the world seems devoid of truth and beauty, what else is there to do but create truth and beauty through promoting life? Sentiment conquers sentimentality.

Scandal

Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince calls Scandal a “necessary mediocrity,” an appropriate label for the film following Stray Dog and preceding Rashomon. Prince also points out that the “amazingly pedestrian” imagery in Scandal could be the result of Kurosawa’s belief that Stray Dog was overly pregnant with technique and therefore represents an attempt to tone down camera flashiness. The only motif Kurosawa tried to develop in the film has to do with the often-false connection between image and reality. Ichiro Aoe (Toshiro Mifune) plays a painter, significantly, whose representation of a mountain the film’s first scene draws criticism from others watching him on account of being “too red” compared to the actual mountain. Aoe replies that he sees the mountain as red, so it is red; it is in the “mind’s eye” what counts. Toward the closing of the film, Aoe and his corrupt but morally strained attorney Hiruta (apparently meaning “leech field,” played by Takashi Shimura) observe the reflection of the night time stars in the sky on a miry bog. Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto points out that Aoe’s early conversation with Miyako (Yoshiko Yamaguchi) about whether Aoe’s motorcycle riding is an imitation of others also reflects the image-reality tension.

Kurosawa himself, in Something Like An Autobiography, admits that the film began as something of a propaganda piece but evolved into a moral duel in one man’s soul. He writes that the part of the attorney flowed so freely from his pen that it took over the film, despite his wishes against it. Only after the film was released did Kurosawa recall a conversation with a broken down attorney at a bar at an earlier date which provided the inspiration for the character of Hiruta. As a result of the strength of this character, Kurosawa writes, “In other words, Scandal proved to be as ineffectual a weapon against slander as a praying mantis against a hatchet.” Likewise, Yoshimoto argues, “Falling short of squarely dealing with the expansion of media as a social problem, Scandal lapses into sentimental melodrama.” Still, that Kurosawa is the creator of the film (with or without his unconscious taking over) is evident. Numerous shots recall No Regrets For Our Youth and foreshadow The Idiot. Mifune begins to subdue his acting following exaggerated performances in Drunken Angel and Stray Dog. (Of course, in Rashomon he returns to form.) Scenes with Aoe, Miyako, and Hiruta’s virtuous, beautiful, and (of course) dying daughter look ahead to similar scenes in films like Seven Samurai and Red Beard, perhaps inspired by some of Ozu’s films. Sentimentality abides, however, in the dying daughter, Aoe’s foolish faith in a pathetic attorney, cinematic contempt for basic courtroom etiquette, and the overdone emphasis on Christmastime. It didn’t end up killing the cause of irresponsible journalism, but Kurosawa continued to develop some of the most essential themes of his canon: altruism, identification, and the moral usurping the immoral.

Drunken Angel

Different but similar

Drunken Angel holds a unique position in Akira Kurosawa’s oeuvre, being a sort of bridge between his lesser-known early films and his much more famous mid-career films. The former category, Kurosawa insisted, consists of films that Kurosawa wasn’t able to control, thanks at first to Japanese political forces and then to American occupation censors. Drunken Angel, by the master’s own account, was the first film that was truly his.

Human-like objects in sump

The postwar setting of the film is key. Despite caricatures to the contrary, Kurosawa’s films and his own explicit writings and interviews make clear that he made films not for any Western audience, but for the Japanese people in the post-World War II setting. He was particularly interested in addressing Japan’s notion of its national identity following its surrender to the Allies. With samurai blood flowing through his veins, Kurosawa held closely to his Japanese heritage in all of its rich history. Note the remarkable number of jidai-geki films that he made, ones based in an earlier historical period (Rashomon, The Idiot, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, The Lower Depths, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, Red Beard, Kagemusha, and Ran to name the most famous). Kurosawa’s most immediate postwar films, however, were based in the present (No Regrets for Our Youth, One Wonderful Sunday, The Most Beautiful, Drunken Angel, Scandal, and Stray Dog). Kurosawa was pushing for relevance in these films, and it can be safely concluded that with Drunken Angel, his first film with artistic autonomy, he addressed issues he believed were most important to Japan at that time. But the film itself is more convincing than any of this side history.

It is immediately evident in Drunken Angel that it portrays a Japan in a state of rebuilding. The opening credits roll with a low tilt on a dark sump at night. Nothing about the image is hopeful or upbeat. The sump will feature in the film as central to the narrative structure and the psychological symbolism of the main characters. A lone guitarist sits on the sump’s edge playing a monophonic, minor-key melody that sets the mood as a few prostitutes wander out of the frame to cement the negative impression of the setting. Takashi Shimura plays the title character, Sanada, an alcoholic doctor at a clinic in the bad side of town. Toshiro Mifune, in his first role for Kurosawa, does a bit of rookie overacting as Matsunaga, a local yakuza (gangster) who finds out he is infected with TB after getting Sanada to remove a bullet from his hand.

Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto points out that Drunken Angel’s setting and characters makes it “a highly self-conscious film” (Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema, Duke University Press, 2000, p. 138). The sump and the symbols associated with it, sometimes human figures, directly relate to the film’s moral theme. Japan is in a sump-like state, and even its angels are drunks. It has been polluted by its own national amnesia due in part to the influence of the American occupation. Kurosawa’s commentary on the US influence is subtle but certainly present. The club where many of the yakuza congregate is “No. 1 – Social Center of Tokyo,” a name so uncreative (and English) that it could only have been so named by the US occupational authorities. At this club, Western music plays, mostly jazz. Stephen Prince argues that these scenes especially make use of Hollywod cinematic codes that reinforce the identification between the amoral yakuza and the West (The Warrior’s Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa, Princeton University Press, 1991, p. 85). While this is possible, it seems difficult to identify only the club scenes as “borrowing syntax from the American cinema.” For one thing, the very American style of the club is bound to bring Americanism to one’s mind. Second, an enormous amount of Kurosawa’s cinema was using American film syntax, by the director’s own admission. His affinity for John Ford in particular (and borrowing from the Western genre) show this. But most important, an emphasis on American cinematic syntax would have undermined the force of Kurosawa’s reproof. By laying the blame for Japan’s condition on the US, Kurosawa would have enabled rather than rebuked and empowered the Japanese people to emerge from its postwar situation. Though at times cynical, Kurosawa’s cinema is always about personal, social, and national responsibility rather than international blame.

Therefore, when Prince argues that the “national schizophrenia” of the film “is the result of the Americanization of Japan,” this kind of scapegoating seems excessive. While Drunken Angel portrays some of the realities reflecting America and its effects on Japan, the film puts the moral culpability and responsibility on individuals. At the risk of giving into auteur theory, this is a common thread in Kurosawa’s films. Red Beard, to which this essay will return later, is a prime example of individual responsibility also located in a medical setting. Prince’s analysis acknowledges this fact when he points out “the film’s critique of outmoded behavioral codes,” Sanada’s proclamation that “willpower can cure all human ailments,” and Sanada’s comment that “the Japanese like to punish themselves with petty sacrifices” (p. 84). Prince’s overall argument that “Kurosawa attempts to describe a new ethic for Japan and the shape of a new social order” (p. 79) is, then, quite accurate. The film is surely about “a double-loss of identity” (p. 86), both a progressive one and a sacrificial one. Matsunaga’s life and health depends on letting go of his status as a yakuza and the “resignation and passivity” that accompany. Sanada, on the other hand, is presented as angelic because of his sacrificial loss of identity. When he meets with a past classmate, he is reminded that he could have easily become a well-to-do physician, opting instead to be a doctor like Red Beard, serving the dregs of society despite the lack of income.

Diagonal, "Eisenstein-like" composition

Yoshimoto seems to hold to a more realistic view of the character of Sanada. Prince seems to imply that Sanada’s angelic nature serves as an explanation, if not a justification, of his alcoholism and edgy demeanor. Yoshimoto, on the other hand, sees Sanada’s character as a miscalculation on Kurosawa’s part, saying that Kurosawa “tries to go beyond the simplistic dichotomy of good and evil by making Sanada a drunkard” (p. 139). From a non-cinematic perspective, it’s easy to understand how a character like Sanada would be an alcoholic. But the effect does not serve Kurosawa’s didactic purpose, instead offering his Japanese audience something less than the role model that he wants to offer. Perhaps Sanada would stand out better if the narrative did not seem to focus on Matsunaga, even making him a sort of “tragic hero” (ibid.) through his contempt for the yakuza world that leads to his death. Still, the final fight between Matsunaga and Okada is choreographed to maximize the pointlessness of their feud. Covered in paint and hanging off of an apartment balcony, Matsunaga’s death is mixed with tragedy, stupidity, and the faintest hint of honor.

It is fascinating that Kurosawa’s first project under his own control shares so much in common with the last film he made before the great shift into (what many have called) a radically different style of filmmaking: Red Beard. Kurosawa felt that after Red Beard he had reached an impasse in his filmmaking, having said everything he wanted to say. His metaphor of medicine and sickness, in Drunken Angel and Red Beard gives him the ability to give his prescription to the Japanese people with maximum clarity. In Red Beard, the title character bears similarities to Sanada in Drunken Angel, but with a few differences. First, he isn’t an alcoholic. Also, he is in charge of a larger clinic with more patients (and worse-off) and more doctors and nurses. Most significantly, his wisdom concerning physical, psychological, and spiritual health and sickness surpasses that of any other character in Kurosawa’s films. Also gruff and impatient at times, Red Beard is more likely to fight back when someone attacks him, not only exploiting his knowledge of the human body and its weak spots, but perhaps also containing some of the samurai ideal in his physical prowess. Yasumoto, the arrogant young doctor at Red Beard’s clinic, becomes sick at a point in the film, just as Matsunaga in Drunken Angel. But Matsunaga’s physical and spiritual/mental illnesses coincide, whereas Yasumoto is first cured of his cynicism and selfishness before becoming physically sick. His sickness serves the theme of Red Beard by allowing a very Matsunaga-like character (the young girl) to nurse Yasumoto back to health and thereby help her own spirit in the process. These examples simply demonstrate the ways in which Red Beard seems to work where Drunken Angel fails. Stephen Prince identifies this and devotes excellent space and even praise to Red Beard. Yoshimoto, probably the better scholar, appears to miss this or at least neglect it, and he devotes less space to these two important films than to almost any other film of Kurosawa’s.

Red Beard

Watched Red Beard the other day for the thousandth time. For those of you unfamiliar, that would be a classic Kurosawa, 1965. It’s the first one I ever saw, and I saw it for no apparent reason. Matt Allison, at the time the movie guy for the college newspaper, began to grab my interest with his reviews. Knowing that he had superior taste in more than just movies, I began to frequent his dvd collection to borrow anything that looked good. It was either the first or second visit to said collection when I noticed one called Red Beard. It was Japanese, black and white, and I hadn’t heard of the supposedly-famous Akira Kurosawa or the supposedly-amazing (actor) Toshiro Mifune. Here’s the ridiculous reason why I picked it up: it was a Criterion Collection dvd, and I had always enjoyed their dvds before. Just to be clear, at that point I had seen a total of two Criterion Collection dvds at that point: Rushmore and Tenenbaums. So, this should give a sense of my thought process at the time.

I don’t remember if I noticed initially that the film was a hair over three hours long. I don’t think it would have mattered. Apparently, I was determined to watch this unheard of (by me) movie. In retrospect, it makes little sense why I would have wanted to. I took it to my apartment and watched it in the afternoon. These were the days of morning classes and no midterms or finals. Still, while my dork roommates were in the library, I watched a movie. With no background on it to speak of, no context, not even the beginning of an education about what was before me, I loved this movie. Quite literally, once the end came, I started it over. I watched half of it again that day, then the other half the next day. I had seen a number of good movies before that; even some that were really good. But Red Beard sort of changed everything for me.

My initial reaction to it hasn’t fundamentally changed. That reaction being, cinema is capable of doing something truly wonderful: making you want to be better, and to be better by hurting when those around you are hurting, while working for their relief. It’s become cliche to define “compassion” according its etymology: “suffering-with.” But insofar as that’s true, this movie shows what it looks like.

Since learning more about film technique, I’ve learned some interesting stuff about Red Beard, such as the fact that, technically speaking, it’s nearly flawless, bordering on perfection. But that’s, in the end, less interesting than its rhetoric. It does things I would not have though art was capable of doing, least of all movies. You can read something, and it can have a series of internal effects. You can watch it on stage, see an exhibit, hear it performed. But I think that, despite the unique power of the written word, there is something sublime in the art of music and cinema. Perhaps this is a truism; sublimity occurs when the ineffable reaches the heart. The sounds that can come from music and the images, coupled with sound, that can come through cinema – these incite feelings and thoughts that are about as close to what C.S. Lewis calls “Joy” as the thing itself.

In Red Beard, to describe some of the scenes of which I am writing would border on a moral wrong, at least an injustice. Incidentally, one of the more expert scholars on Kurosawa devoted perhaps his longest section and certainly his highest praise to Red Beard. But perhaps more striking, the expert of all Kurosawa experts wrote less about this film than any other of the master’s. Even the literati know when their words fall short. So, it suffices to say that this anti-review would be better written not by discussing the film itself as much as the effect it has had on me. I have, since that first Kurosawa experience, seen nearly all 30 of his films. Many are masterpieces, truly. Most are at least wonderful. None is quite like Red Beard. And if one of these made me drop everything and want to study cinema professionally, it was this one. It’s good.