IN my film-criticism class, students have a prerequisite before even the introductory lecture and readings are given: Rashomon, Seven Samurai and Yojimbo. These films are all directed by Kurosawa Akira. Once the class has settled, Ozu is introduced to them.
No two Japanese filmmakers are more opposite each other than Ozu and Kurosawa. It is common for critics to note the static camera of Ozu and the riveting movement in the cinematography of Kurosawa. Lessons about the visual in film and the use of space abound in the works of these two masters.
It is thus not a bias but more of a habit really for me to introduce students to cinema, in general, and Japanese cinema, in particular, by way of Kurosawa and, later, Ozu.
After all the samurai films of the 1950s, Kurosawa, for me, begins with Ran and ends with Rhapsody in August. The former is Kurosawa’s adaptation of King Lear and was one of the filmmaker’s comebacks. In the 1970s, film production in Japan was on the wane. Pop culture of Japan had not yet surged and was not seen as a major influence on the arts. From the late 1960s and mid-1970s, Kurosawa had difficulty finding producers. It was the fate of Kurosawa that he had admirers in Europe and the US. His film Dreams (Yume) would get support from no less than George Lucas and would even star, in one of the episodes/dreams, Martin Scorsese as Van Gogh. For Ran, Kurosawa would be saved by the French producer Serge Silberman, who was behind many Luis Buñuel films.
The filming of Ran is legendary. Kurosawa, as in many of his films, waited for the right cloud formation so that he could create what he expected to be the atmosphere for the scene. In the case of Rhapsody in August, it has been written many times how Kurosawa waited for the storm that was battering the Philippines to arrive in Nagasaki. By the time the typhoon hit Japan, it had become already a baby storm.
Ran, which could mean “confused” or “in chaos,” proved to be a chaotic phase in the career of Kurosawa. The film was late for Cannes and was not entered for the Best Foreign Film category in the Oscars.
The one interesting lesson for film students when it comes to Kurosawa’s films is in his use of sound. In Ran, Kurosawa would suspend the other sounds so that the music would soar in the background or frame the action. The audience could see the “uprising,” which is another meaning of Ran, but they could not hear the sounds of guns…till Kurosawa allowed a gunshot to pierce the action onscreen. From then on, the screen is filled not only with smoke but with volleys.
The same approach to sound would be present in Kurosawa’s Rhapsody in August.
In one scene, the sound of waterfalls is muted until the character of Richard Gere finishes reading the letter about the death of his father.
Beauty is imperfect and incomplete. I think of that Japanese aesthetic when I recommend the screening of Rhapsody to film enthusiasts.
There is something missing or overly present in this controversial film. If the Japanese principle of beauty is characterized by subtlety and shadings, Rhapsody is many times confrontational. A park to A-bomb victims is presented almost in its entirety; a gathering of old men and women commemorating the day of the bombing by way of a Buddhist ritual is capped by an obsessive shot of ants crawling and ending up around the petals of a red rose.
It is this literal manner, however, that saves the film from obscurity. The grandmother being visited by her four grandchildren explains to them the day the bomb was dropped over Nagasaki. She points out to them the two mountain peaks beyond which lies the city of Nagasaki. A flash was seen and a thunderous roar that was never really loud ensued from somewhere. The grandmother points to the part of the mountain. The camera looks into that direction: a gigantic mushroom cloud appears and an eye opens. It is a scary image that is so literal, it ceases to be a metaphor.
Kurosawa uses Western music to define the grief of those who witnessed the bomb and those who now inherit the legacy of that tragedy. In front of the twisted steel beams in a school where many children perished, a group of hibakusha, or A-bomb victims, place blooms to memorialize the death of their innocent friends. The sacred hymn “Stabat Mater” slowly creeps and reminds us that Kurosawa is doing that scene more for the world than for the Japanese.
I saw Rhapsody years ago, in the 1980s, at Iwanami Hall in Kanda, Tokyo. That was the same theater that hosted the screening of Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s Rizal and transformed the filmmaker into a darling of the media and critics there.
Rhapsody in August is the story of four grandchildren who were in Nagasaki for the summer. The four find out that their grandmother has a brother who is still alive in Hawaii. The wealthy relative wants his sister to visit them and might as well bring along the grandchildren. But the days in Nagasaki expose the grandchildren to the hidden horrors of war.
Gere plays an American-Japanese and cousin to the four grandchildren. Gere, who was into Buddhism during this period, speaks Nihongo in the film and delivers an apology to her aunt. Many are of the opinion that Kurosawa was being pro-Japanese in the film. In that screening many years ago, some students—and students are always fans of Kurosawa—walked out. Viewing the film, one realizes that it is antiwar.
Ozu directed Late Spring. It is the story of a father who arranged everything so his only daughter could be married off. All the characteristics of an Ozu film is in Late Spring—the low-angle shot, the stasis in the cinematography, and the simple narrative bordering on purity. Late Spring is considered by many critics as a perfect film. Kurosawa, as written, had high regards for the film. Ozu, in many interviews always, in the most Japanese self-effacing way, thinking of himself as not as dynamic as Kurosawa.
Two of the saddest scenes in cinema are in Ozu’s Late Spring and Kurosawa’s Ikiru. In Late Spring, the father comes home and is met by the caretaker who is set to already leave. The father enters the room, now alone because his daughter has been married off. He sits down and finds an apple on the table. He gets a knife and slowly peels the fruit. The camera looks from behind: the apple is peeled and the father slowly slumps. We do not see the tears because the camera goes out into the beach and brings us a view of waves, their froth silvery in the night. The music soars to an ending.
Kurosawa’s Ikiru (To Live) is a story of a businessman who finds out he has terminal illness and decides to do good. In one of the scenes, the businessman goes into a park that had been built through his donation. He sits on a swing, the snow thick around him, and he sings an old song.