Ikiru [1952]

One usually tends to associate Akira Kurosawa with such staggering samurai epics as The Seven Samurai and Ran, among many others. Ikiru, despite not being archetypal in that sense, nonetheless remains as prescient, tragic, emotionally affecting and enthralling, as Kurosawa’s other masterpieces. Kenji Watanabe is a stoic and intensely lonely government bureaucrat living a drab existence; he’s been doing his job detachedly for the past 30 years, and is hopelessly fond of his son (despite it never being reciprocated). He’s woken out of this stupor upon being diagnosed with terminal illness, and his uneventful life suddenly goes berserk. Initially he starts doing things he never did in his life, like taking an announced leave from his workplace, and plunging into the hedonism of Tokyo’s nightlife. However, with only a few months left in his life, he decides to do something that will leave behind his legacy, however small, in the world. This deeply humanistic film, filled with heartbreaking pathos, remains an astounding thesis on existential crisis, societal hypocrisy and one man’s quest to find the meaning of his life. It is littered with sequences that would leave permanent imprints on ones’ mind, like the one where the inebriated Kenji breaks into a soulful song at a bar. Ikiru benefited immensely by Takashi Shimura’s devastating performance – his acting is a near-treatise on how to portray complex emotions merely through facial expressions, eyes and body language.





Director: Akira Kurosawa
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Urban Drama
Language: Japanese
Countries: Japan

Ran [1985]

Ran, Japanese maestro Akira Kurosawa’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s King Lear, nearly destroyed him as a filmmaker. But history has been kind to him, and Ran has consistently ranked as one of his greatest masterpieces, alongside the likes of Rashomon, Seven Samurai and Yojimbo. Ran is an epic with brutal power, a movie that overwhelms with its stunning visual beauty as it does with its display of such basic instincts as honour, betrayal, vengeance, and emotional anarchy. Though a samurai movie, its theme and story are both universal and relevant for all times. When an ageing samurai lord bequeaths his throne to his eldest son, his seemingly innocuous decision sparks a chain of events that spreads like a wildfire among his sons, and destroys everyone in the process – emotionally and physically. His eldest son’s daughter, a scheming and calculating lady, adds fuel to fire by planting seeds of distrust and lust for power. The film’s scope is therefore as much to do with one of sight and sound, as it is to do with portraying, in all its nuances, emotional turbulence. The films boasts of a towering central performance by Tatsuya Nakadai who, as the elderly warlord and a great warrior of his time, realizes only too late the damages caused by a decision that was heavily opposed by his straight-talking youngest son. The movie is drenched in pessimism and portrays a world that goes astray at the slightest opportunity, and this breathtaking spectacle has as company another stunning Shakespeare adaptation of Kurosawa, Throne of Blood.





Director: Akira Kurosawa
Genre: Drama/Epic/Family Drama/Action/Samurai Film
Language: Japanese
Country: Japan

Throne of Blood (Kumonosu-jo) [1957]

Legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood is often considered as the greatest cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare. The master, of course, might have a point since his Ran, adapted from King Lear, is also equally renowned, if not more. However, there’s rarely any doubt in that Macbeth hasn’t received a more stunning and awe-inspiring cinematic rendition. Starring Kurosawa regular and inimitable actor Toshiro Mifune as the eponymous brave yet tragic hero, the movie is an epic Samurai take on the Shakespeare classic. Based during feudal war-torn Japan of medieval years – a time in which his Seven Samurai and Rashomon were also based – the movie is as much a visual spectacle as it is a deeply psychological one. The self-destructive ambitions of a samurai warrior, played with the kind of gleefully over-the-top, maniacal and utterly memorable swagger that few apart from Mifune could, has made for a grand tale filled with betrayal, treachery and murder. Right from the valorous warrior’s spectacular rise, till the bloody and deeply ironic denouement, the movie is a blast of high-octane force and a bleakly moody denunciation of man’s age-old lust for ‘power and glory’.





Director: Akira Kurosawa
Genre: Drama/Epic/War/Samurai Movie
Language: Japanese
Country: Japan

Dreams (Akira Kurosawa's Dreams) [1990]

Though often dismissed as pompous self-indulgence borne out of senility, Dreams nonetheless deserves a watch as much for its visual poetry as for the philosophical overtones of one of the greatest masters of world cinema – Akira Kurosawa. Comprising of 8 loosely connected dreams, semi-autobiographical vignettes if you will, the movie has covered a plethora of subjects ranging from superstitions to surreal explorations, from deforestation to the futility of war, from nuclear holocaust to a post-apocalypse, from hopelessness to celebration of life. Some of the best shorts here, like the one where Martin Scorsese plays Van Gogh (arguably the best of the lot), the deathly portrayal of Japan’s militaristic past, the one with the sublime animal dance, and the marvelous final short set in an utopian village, are those which manage to tread the fine line between philosophical overtures and moralizing. Things, however, get hackneyed and avoidable in the ones where Kurosawa couldn’t help being overtly didactic. On the whole this is a unique, albeit an inconsistent, experience.


p.s. By the way, is the elaborate dance sequence of forest gods and goddesses in the second short a subtle tribute to the legendary ‘dance of ghosts’ scene in Satyajit Ray’s timeless fantasy movie Goopy Gaine Bagha Baine (The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha), considering the fact that Kurosawa and Ray had immense mutual respect and admiration for each other? I'd love to know if others (i.e. those who've seen both the movies) feel the same way as I do.





Director: Akira Kurosawa
Genre: Drama/Fantasy/Adventure/Experimental/Avante-Garde
Language: Japanese
Country: Japan

Rashomon [1951]

The most famous Japanese movie and legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s best known work, Rashomon ranks among world cinema’s greatest masterpieces. Borrowed innumerable times by various directors, this was the first movie that introduced what is known as the ‘Rashomon Effect’ – contradictory/conflicting chroniclings of the same incident by the various observers of the event. Set in the 11^th century and employing flashbacks inside flashbacks, the movie recounts what might have transpired which led to the rape of a woman and the murder of her husband allegedly by a samurai (played with explosive unpredictability by Kurosawa regular Toshiro Mifune). The camera work is exemplary – who can ever forget the scene where the woodcutter (narrator) is walking into the jungle before he discovers (?) the crime scene. A horde of cameras at various angles and speeds were used to record the motion of just a single character, making this one of the most unforgettable sequences in film history. At once ominous and reflective, Rashomon is most memorable for its brilliant exploration of the thin line between ‘truth’ and ‘perception’.





Director: Akira Kurosawa
Genre: Drama/Crime Drama/Samurai Movie
Language: Japanese
Country: Japan

Three... Extemes [2004]

Three…Extremes is a unique omnibus of short films in the genre of psychological terror – unique because three reputed directors, one each from Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan, combined forces in order to scare the viewers. The first one, Dumplings, directed by Fruit Chan (of Made in Hong Kong fame), is a well-made and marvelously eerie tale of a beautiful lady going to a mysterious maker of home-made dumplings, eating which would improve her fertility. The second film, Cut (undoubtedly the best of the trio), directed by the inimitable Park Chan-Wook, is a near poetic execution of a tale of extreme violence. The short, involving a vicious psychological tussle between a famous filmmaker and psychopath, is brilliantly conceptualized and extremely well enacted. The finale, Takashi Mike’s Box, unfortunately, is a complete letdown. The tale of a lonely writer harboring a dark secret from her childhood days, by simultaneously being too surreal and bizarre, fails to either terrify or engage the viewers. Though episodic shorts can be disorienting and/or disengaging for viewers at times, Three… Extremes, on the whole, is a decent watch – if not anything, for Chan-Wook’s enthralling piece.






Directors: Fruit Chan, Park Chan-Wook, Takashi Mike
Genre: Horror/Psychological Thriller/Omnibus Film
Language: Chinese/Korean/Japanese
Country: China (Hong Kong)/South Korea/Japan

Seven Samurai (Shichinin No Samurai) [1954]

Arguably one of Akira Kurosawa’s grandest ventures, Seven Samurai is a landmark movie of such epic proportions that most viewers would be left overwhelmed by its sheer force. Set in the feudal, war-torn society of erstwhile Japan, the movie is perhaps the epitome of honour, bravery, duty, friendship, loyalty and the art of war through strategy and cunning. At over 3 hours long, viewing the movie might appear daunting to viewers accustomed to watching sub-2 hour long films, but one can rest assured that “bored” is one word that no one in their right senses would associate with any of the sequences filmed herein. The legendary tale of seven samurai, hired by the people of a poor terror-stricken village, to fight against a group of 40 bandits, is just one aspect of the movie; the detailed etching of each of the seven samurai with all their traits, skills and idiosyncrasies, the exquisitely composed battle scenes, the human story of love, prejudice, suffering, self-centeredness, struggle, vindication and the greater glory, the lyrical beauty of humanism and service above self, the detailed team-formation and strategizing of battle plan (and its near-clinical execution), and of course the splendid performance by the actors – these are but a few of the features that would be forever engrained in the minds of every cine-goer and film-lover. The movie was remade in America as The Seven Magnificent Men, that, though entertaining, never achieved the awesome beauty of this Kurosawa masterpiece. It was also the chief inspiration behind the majestic Hindi movie Sholay.





Director: Akira Kurosawa
Genre: Drama/Adventure/Samurai Film/Action/Ensemble Film
Language: Japanese
Country: Japan

Yojimbo (The Bodyguard) [1961]

Though not as universally renowned as Rashomon or Seven Samurai, Yojimbo is often considered to be Akira Kurosawa’s most influential work. If not anything, it remains one of the most quintessential and archetypal lone ranger movies ever made – a template that was famously remade into the spaghetti western For A Few Dollars More by Sergio Leone. Sanjuro (brilliantly played by Kurosawa regular Toshiro Mifune), the original 'Man With No Name', is a bored, detached and laconic Samurai. He is seemingly devoid of morals, friends and rules. But he believes in vigilante justice – the kind where end justifies the means, and he becomes doubly effective because he is a master swordsman with no equals. So when he decides to play the two sides of a warring faction of a ravaged village against each other, his principle foe turns out to be, quite appropriately, a character straight out of Western movies – a crafty, gun-slinging antagonist. The brutal action sequences have been magnificently juxtaposed with terrific character developments and moments of subtle humanism; case in point: the scene of a dog casually strolling by with a piece of a person’s chopped-off hand in its mouth is as jarring to the senses, as the beautifully composed background score played during the movie’s love-story sub-plot is moving. Stellar performances by the two principle leads add to the dynamic energy and flashes of dark humour of the script.





Director: Akira Kurosawa
Genre: Action/Adventure/Samurai Film
Language: Japanese
Country: Japan