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| You know, a date movie. |
For me Kurosawa was my gateway into
world cinema. After him came Herzog, Bergman, Godard, and Renoir and
all of these other greats (and Godard). He also came along with me
discovering indie directors like Jarmusch and Smith and Tarantino.
They showed me that there was more to foreign films than anime and
kung fu, and that there was more to movies than Schwarzenegger action
flicks (though, those are pretty great too). But, it all started with
Kurosawa.
Rashomon is probably one of
the well criticized movies in history. It has the distinction of
being the first big Japanese film to hit the west (winning a Golden
Lion the Venice Film Festival, as well as an Academy Award), as well
as being Kurosawa's breakout film outside of Japan. It's well trod
ground and I won't waste too much of your time telling you why you
should see one of the best films ever made from a man that is maybe
the best director of all time.
Now, with that said. . .
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| Even his sweat is a better actor than everyone else! |
There is one aspect of Rashomon that is
close to my heart. Watching it again, the film's structure stands out to me the most. I don't mean the multi-layered narrative or the conflicting realities, what I noticed is something that nobody ever seems to bring up. What I noticed was this: It's 88
minutes long. Correction: Rashomon is only 88 minutes long.
The film doesn't feel like it. It
feels, at once this incredibly fast paced film, yet it can also be dissected, broken apart, and endlessly gone over again and again. It
is a movie full of a vast richness of ideas, that like any great work
of art, can be looked from any angle to discover something new. It is
also searingly paced. Even its flab is there with a distinct
purpose. It's this dictomy that is indicative of Kurosawa's mastery
of the camera.
In Rashomon, Kurosawa manages to tell
four seperate stories, each with varying levels of truth and
obfuscation built into them, and still manages to make the entire
package entertaining and accessible. It isn't showy. It isn't
pretentious. It doesn't revel in its modernism or its form. It's just
a story. A really, really good story.
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| Takashi Shimura upon hearing Tarantino's next film will be 187 minutes long. |
As much as we need the David Leans and
the Paul Thomas Andersons of the world, cinema also needs its Clint
Eastwoods and its John Hustons. It needs people that can tell concise
stories with skill as much as it needs guys who know how to use an
elephant in a scene (Peter Jackson used to be both of these people,
now he's some kind of a dwarf-fixated sexual deviant). Bigger doesn't always
mean better, though, in Kurosawa's case, sometimes it does. I mean,
Rashomon is a masterpiece at 88 minutes and Seven Samurai is one at
207. So, I don't know, maybe even that isn't so cut and dry.
I'm a Kurosawa fan. While others have
their Hitchcocks or their Truffauts or their Scorceses, I have my
Kurosawa. As much as I associate him with a certain rose colored part
of my history, it's films like Rashomon that remind me why that is.
He sticks with me because he's a great artist and he's a great artist
in so many different ways. As skilled as he was with the three-hour
spectacular, he was also capable of paring down his films into these
perfect, 90 minute packages. It's like finding out that your favorite
painter was as good at panoramas as he was at portraiture. Rashomon
being 90 minutes long also dovetails nicely into my belief that 90
minutes tends to be the perfect length of a film, but let's just
ignore that for the time being, shall we?
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