I totally agree with your view of Kurosawa as someone making movies for his audiences, and not so much for himself or film critics. And this is something that also I find extraordinary in his work. I also understand your wish to understand the films as they were seen by contemporary Japanese audiences, although (as I have noted previously) I don’t personally see it as a prerequisite for enjoying or discussing the films, but rather as just one possible angle of interpretation (one with historical and biographical aspects to it).

And to the movie – slightly embarrassed to admit I hadn’t seen it before! Was slightly put off by some of the synopses I’d read. I watched it in two parts over the last two evenings. First reaction is to be quite overwhelmed by it – amazing scenes, wonderful story! Already catapulted up to my list of favourite movies. But I can see why many people see it as the start of a decline or as somewhat disappointing. I can understand why critics have argued that the core story is somewhat didactic and morally simplistic. I disagree, but it’ll take me a few days I think to clarify in my own head the reasons. But my first thought is that the core of the story is not, as many people assume, the relationship between the two doctors. The central narrative arc in my view is of the young doctor and his relationship to women. First, he is rejected by his fiance. Then he is nearly killed by the insane woman. After which he is ’saved’ mentally and physically by a young girl. And finally he is accepted and brought to happiness by his bride. But enough of that line of thought for now.

What this movie confirms for me in a general sense about Kurosawa is a point I made in the tread on ‘reasons for liking or disliking Kurosawa’. I think Kurosawa is the most generous of directors, because his movies always strike me as being made for the audience. By which I mean, he never (or at least rarely) planned his movies as a ‘personal artistic statement’, or a ‘money making, crowd pleasing entertainment’, or even as ‘Oscar bait’. He made his movies to communicate his ideas, his inner conflicts and his sheer love of cinema to his audience. Thats why I would reiterate that I do not think any of Kurosawas early movies can be understood without reference to the contemporary young Japanese audience. Having regard to some of the quotes in Richie, I think Kurosawa quite delibrately set out in Red Beard to push all the audiences buttons – to make them cry, laugh, gasp in amazement and have the bejasus scared out of them.

But one negative thing – nothing to do with Kurosawa, but with the BFI. I find the ‘introduction’ by Alex Cox to his movies to be almost an insult to the viewer. The general overview given on all the BFI editions I’ve seen has Cox giving a very simplistic overview of Kurosawas life and work – sort of a ‘I had a quick glance at Wikipedia before doing this’ sort of conversation to camera. He also includes some comments that are highly dubious – stating for example that John Ford is the major influence on Kurosawa (he is obviously an influence, but I doubt if many modern critics would see him as the most important one).

But worst of all are the specific comments on the films. For Sanjuro he actually gives away the ending – in the introduction to the movie! For Red Beard, I doubt if he actually watched it before making his comments. He praises the sound effects in the fight scene (wow, deep analysis that is), then he castigates Kurosawa for his sexism in his films. He does it by saying that in the movie ‘all the patients are women, all are rescued by the male doctors’. He even says that from the film ‘only women seemed to get sick in medieval Japan’. This despite the fact that the film clearly shows the male and female wards, and of the six patients who are clearly delineated in character, four are male! (the two older men who die in the first half, the corpulant Lord, and the boy in the final part). There is surely an argument that Kurosawa was sexist (I don’t agree, but I acknowledge the argument), but Cox’s points are simply poor quality undergrad stuff, i can’t understand how the BFI allowed this to be added to their dvd.

Ok, rant over.

Anyway. As planned, I watched Red Beard yesterday and I must say that I don’t really share Jeremy’s view of the movie. In fact, I had almost forgotten how marvellous a work it is! I was, in a good way, both physically and emotionally completely exhausted by the end of it, even if in terms of its duration the three hours had felt more like just an hour and half.

I do, however, have some possible answers to why Jeremy feels the movie to lack personality or to be “too masterful”. I will explore those in a future post once I get my thoughts and notes sorted out.

Jeremy: Now even I feel stupid saying a movie is too good, but still I contend there is some lack of personality. I dont believe I can really describe or even make sense of it to myself-but there you have it.

It sounds like what you are talking about here is something that we could refer to as the “Persian carpet problem” (not that I have ever heard anyone refer to it in this way). In many cultures, it is said, artistic perfection is deliberately avoided, with Persian rug makers leaving a knot untied and Navajo blanket makers introducing a flaw to their weaving pattern on purpose.

The reasons given for this are on the surface culture-bound, with the Persians saying that nothing should be allowed to reflect God’s perfection, while the Navajo reasoning that the flaw will allow the spirit of the blanket freedom and therefore make it infinite, rather than being confined. But I would personally suggest the real reason to be that artistic perfection is, as Jeremy wrote, somewhat sterile. I personally cannot help thinking about the works of Stanley Kubrick here (which I love, but find very cold).

I am no art historian, but it also seems to me that whenever a culture devices the means to create something very real or “life-like”, its artists soon abandon that style and go on to create something that is in some ways less realistic, but what in the end comes across as infinitely more interesting to us. I think that it happened for example in Greek sculpture where realistic proportions were abandoned fairly soon after the artisans had finally perfected them, while in western painting we see something very similar happening in the 19th century, with impressionism rising to counter what had become almost photo-realistic painting.

But as I said, I am not expert here, and may well be totally mistaken. Coco, our art historian in-residence, most probably has much more to tell us about this topic!

As for Red Beard, I am not entirely sure if I agree with it being “too perfect”. I’ll think about this as I watch the film — which I hope to do today.

Such perfection can only be done by a master, so this is no way is intended to discredit the film or Kurosawa. But, if there is such thing of a master being too masterful, I would say this film is prime example.

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Man! I really laid it heavy with the doctor metaphors and puns in my first post-I just now realized it. cue in the stupid “bag floating in the wind” shot from “American Beauty”

Still, one of my favorites.