Akira Kurosawa
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Akira Kurosawa is widely considered not only one of the greatest Japanese directors, but one of the best in the world. In addition to his masterpieces, such as Seven Samurai, he has consistently shown his creative talents in his nearly 30 films. However, some of his films are clearly worse than others, and he has had some failures. As with all director's work, there are obvious reasons for this. He improved his filmmaking talents as he gained more experience, and of course sometimes he chose better material or more filmic subjects. Moreover, with Kurosawa, another factor at work here, his humanist political beliefs, damaged his ability to make quality films at times. Kurosawa has been described by some writers as being apolitical, and he seems comfortable with that definition. He certainly has distanced himself from the Marxist camp, in interviews and clearly in his films. He does not have a romanticized view of the working and lower classes. He does not see the world as simply good versus evil, with terrible capitalists exploiting the angelic masses. He is clearly not a left-wing ideologue. Nor is he a right-wing one. But does he stay "above the fray," not taking a stand? He certainly prompts the individual in his films. He believes in people being the priority over ideas, buildings and governments. In No Regrets For Our Youth, his hero takes a stand for individual freedom against the repressive policies of a dictatorial government. In Ikiru, his hero battl
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mmaker. With his first film Sanshiro a Sugata (1943) he simply told an entertaining story and began to establish himself as a filmmaker of immense skill. During the war, he continued to concentrate on storytelling for the most part and developed his skills further.
On the other hand, the dictatorship did at times push him too far in the other direction, getting him to make propaganda in support of the war effort. The Most Beautiful (1944) was an example of this. It focused on a woman working in a military factory, but it was episodic, with flashbacks. It was more a pseudo-documentary than a fully developed story. Kurosawa did focus on an individual, but the larger implications of his treatment (the glorification of devotion to the war effort) cannot be ignored. It was clearly a message movie--although the wrong message for someone with Kurosawa's beliefs.
When World War II ended, the Japanese restrictions against his politics were lifted. And Kurosawa overreacted by taking this as an invitation to finally express what he had been dying to, his humanist view of the world. Instead of taking a subtle approach, letting his humanism come out of the story and actions of the characters, he was eager to take advantage of hi
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Approximate Word count = 2182
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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