View Larger Image |
Red Beard - Criterion Collection Director: Akira Kurosawa Number of Items: 1 Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen Format: Black & White, Widescreen Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Running Time: 185 minutes Studio: Criterion Collection Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Region Code: 1 Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2002-07-16 Buy from Amazon |
 "Life Changing"This is an Epic movie. It is the cure for the vanity of self indulgence. The love that is internalized will be returned. "Show Me A Movie More Inspiring Than This"I dare you people out there. Kurosawa's most inspiring work is one breathtaking 3 hour ride into the hearts and minds of clinical doctors that has still not been matched by any ER episode. Every frame in this piece looks and feels beautiful, and thank you to Criterion for doing so. I haven't seen a Kurosawa film that has been remastered to this degree. It will be a hard one to follow-up on quality. I actually would recommmend this film to people who loved Amelie. Why? Both are incredibly inspiring movies, but Red Beard is on the other side of the spectrum. It deals with death, despair, incurable illness within the heart, but by the end of the film, you are more inspired by the will to live, to make something of yourself that you never felt before. That is what Kurosawa wanted to make, and he truly went for it on his last black and white film. The irony of what happens 5 years later. He was only human as we were. We love and miss you Kurosawa-Kantoku. Best shot/sequence: Here's where Kurosawa does his best. The scene where Chobo is dying and the maids are yelling down the well, the camera tilts down from the faces of the maids into the reflection of water at the bottom of the well, but gives the illusion that the camera has shifted to the bottom of the well looking up at the maids. With a single teardrop from Otoyo hitting the face of the water, then we realize that the camera is actually hidden above them. Genuine masterwork.  "Kurosawa introduces psychoanalysis to the Japanese"In addition to being about the relationship between the young and old doctors, "Red Beard" is Kurosawa's can-opener for the Japanese psyche, with which he gently urges very private people everywhere to recognize how many hold deep hidden suffering inside them, which makes them ill, and the value of sharing those secrets. Again and again, the movie is about how hidden secrets make people sick, and how the old doctor can intuit the presence of these secrets and give patients some way to relieve them. This may be considered the deep subtext of the film, beneath the coming-of-age drama that centers on the young doctor. The film is beautiful, strikingly directed and acted, with moments that are amazing cadenzas of acting skill, where the director allows the actors to show how much they can make out of an emotion through their body-language. It may also appear heavy-handed and obvious at times to Western viewers, who have had a hundred years of Freudian exploration of psychosomatic medicine. But if I understand the context, Kurosawa is asking many of his Japanese viewers to consider for the first time the enormous hidden harm caused by physical and sexual abuse, extreme poverty (and extreme wealth), some uses of traditional authority, patriarchial attitudes, the prideful identification with a dead aristocracy, government policies that punish the poor, broken and bruised hearts resulting from complicated and entangled relationships, resourcefully anti-social adaptations to oppression, and other dark shadows beneath the enameled glaze of contemporary Japanese complacency. Forgive me if that sounds overstated. But watch for it just under the surface of the fllm, again and again, and increasingly as the film goes on. The film strikes me as a profound and profoundly sad social document, braced by a heroic sense that individuals can still make a difference. It's not just, as you will read elsewhere, an uplifting story about two doctors. There is much more, and that more is a tragic vision of how people and society conspire in a dance of self-defeat, and where a caring person might try to change this. "Beautiful"This is the most beautiful movie; its more like a long dance. I was scanning the DVD slowly during a few scenes and was mesmerized by the movements. I think it took me about 5 hours to watch it the first time (yesteday). Toshiro Mifune is the finest & most versatile actor ever, and when he works with the best director ever its always magic. I've seen many of Mifune's films with and without Kurasawa. I just needed to tell someone who could appreciate why! And I agree with the reviewer who pointed out the scene when Chobo was ill and the women were looking down the well. When Otoya's teardrop fell... well, it was brilliant. "Akahige"This is simply the best film I've ever seen in my entire life. I've studied the films of Kurosawa Akira thoroughly and my opinion remains deeply rooted. In a previous review of Akahige, one person mentioned the scene in which the the maids and Otoyo are screaming Chobo's name down the well. This person said this was the best scene. I have to disagree because it makes the viewer think too much about the camera, sucking the emotion out of the scene and replacing it with curiosity as to how the scene was filmed. This is a problem that occurs over and over and over again in the Wachowski brother's Matrix films. The viewer thinks about how it was really accomplished, not about any sort of sentimental value. Other than that scene, which, actually, I believe is the worst scene, the movie is so great that it can hardly even be described in words alone. In fact, it can't because words and cinema are two different things. Watch this movie. Just to give a little historical background, this is the final collaboration (made in 1965) between Kurosawa Akira (said to be the greatest director ever) and Mifune Toshiro (said to be the greatest actor ever). I'd also suggest watching the rest of Kurosawa Akira's films first, especially Drunken Angel, which happens to be the first time Kurosawa Akira and Mifune Toshiro worked together. Kurosawa had never really been impressed by any actor/actress before he met Mifune. He claimed that Mifune could do in one movement what a normal actor would take three movements to express. He had just been discharged from the Japanese military and starred in half of Kurosawa Akira's films, which is quite a lot. After all, Kurosawa directed approximately thirty films in his lifetime, including such flicks as Sugata Sanshiro, Drunken Angel, The Seven Samurai, and Kagemusha. So, all in all, this is the best film ever. One flaw is its length though, as other reviewers have mentioned. It's difficult to watch a three hour film over and over again due to its sheer size. I'm still collecting Kurosawa Akira's films, but no collection would be complete without Akahige. |
