actually, just notes on a very few ideas picked up in some of the books below:

“Waiting for the Weather”, “The Emperor and the Wolf” a cautionary note on “Kurosawa and Japanese Cinema”, “Akira Kurosawa Interviews” by Bert Cardullo and “Something Like an Autobiography” and “Films of Akira Kurosawa”. (I’ve already pronounced “Intertextual” by Goodwin a crock. Risking the tag of closemindedness, I’ll stick to my evaluation!)

Certain things float through conversations and books about Kurosawa time and time again. The end of the Mifune/Kurosawa collaboration, as has been mentioned in posts above, is one I wonder about.

Teruyo Nogami, in “Weather” comes closest to satisfying my sense of what might possibly have happened. Her understated account feels closest to truth. I believe that Kurosawa lost faith in Mifune because of Oguni’s comment. Once Kurosawa lost faith, it might have been impossible for him to regain it. In fact, I am sure of it.

It must have become imperative for Kurosawa to find an alternative to Mifune. And, he couldn’t. But, he had to go on. No wonder that “Dodeska’den” is an omnibus film. Kurosawa probably tried to tell himself “You’ve made films without Mifune before….”. He had made them before, yes. But, before a loss of faith and after are two different things. Like before a divorce and after.

The loss of faith is the most troubling thing that can happen to an artist. Once it starts, perhaps he loses faith in everything. Perhaps he attempts suicide. I don’t think that Kurosawa’s suicide attempt is a surprise. If a man says, “Me minus the cinema equals nothing” his whole identity would be shaken by a loss of faith in his choices, in his art. A mistake as huge as mis-casting Mifune as “Red Beard”? Then, to have the failure of his next film. And to bring down the other three artists involved in the venture! Horrible! I can feel Kurosawa’s despair.

Sometimes, I think of Van Gogh seeing the vast store of his unsold paintings Theo had kept. Vincent committed suicide not long after that sight. Artists have their identities so wound-up in what they make! And, is it any wonder, when young people define themselves by the music they listen to? How much more for the artist is the art a reason to live!

I think that Nogami also has some insight into the divergent careers of both men after the split. I believe that Kurosawa first struggled, then had a bright world-stage luminance, while Mifune worked a bit sporadically, then, finally, somewhat meaninglessly. She implies a rather tragic end to MIfune’s life…something confirmed by the Galbraith book, as well. I really cried reading about the ends of both of their careers and lives in “Emperor and Wolf”. There were a few bits in that book that were quite insightful. And, the comprehensive filmographies and critical receptions are amazingly researched.

“…and Japanese Cinema” So, Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto is a very nice guy. I wrote him an E-mail just to touch base with him on his book, and he wrote back. That’s pretty sweet! He’s a peach, but I want to just put out this cautionary message about over-intellectualizing things: just as Kurosawa keeps reminding every interviewer who gets a little too academic, we have to be careful about being too clever in analysing his films. In one passage on “Stray Dog” Yoshimoto makes an apophenic connection between a sign “Muraki” that seems to conflate the name of Mifune’s character “Murakami”, a loss of sexuality, and the lost gun of the story. But, on the Criterion DVD, the assistant art director Yoshiro Muraki said he put the sign in the movie so that his own name would be seen! Ah, sometimes there is a simple answer that has NOTHING to do with some secret meaning!

Allright, the Bert Cardullo book “Akira Kurosawa Interviews” has bits and pieces that help to fill in the corners, but strangely, the penultimate interview is Cardullo’s own with Kurosawa, and seems a re-telling of the last pages of “Something Like an Autobiography”. I can only assume, since “Something” was published in 1983, that this 1992 “Interview” ’s similarity comes from Kurosawa repeating the same bits and pieces over and over again!

So, we have this general lament from Donald Richie, in “Films of” stating that Kurosawa was only interested in talking about the current or next film, and never made “small talk” (but, my goodness, you can easily tell from any Criterion commentary by Richie that he is a man who likes to talk too much! In fact, some of his comments fall wide of the mark, just because of the momentum of his talking…! You can actually feel his mind wandering away from his mouth. How in the world can “The Idiot” be “just a filmed book” and too close to the original? That’s crazy! A film is always a translation into visual terms…! Oh, Donald!) and, as I read above, in the official book reviews, we really do not get the things we want from Kurosawa, do we? The tiny bits of autobiography we get from Kurosawa in “Something” aren’t enough. I am grateful for them, though! They have the quality of myth, and it makes me think that Kurosawa used his life as a totem-real experiences were remembered and related only in their relationship to their use in later life in cinema. Really interesting to me, that!

Anyway, we can’t seem to get really close to the man, nor can we get really close to his theory of film-making, ‘cuz Kurosawa keeps batting us away from theory, like a hand waved against a troublesome gnat. And, the big fat books like Richie’s are polluted by “humanism” and a sourness toward the late works, which make later efforts like Prince’s come up with such crap lines as “…the passage from willed optimism of the early films to the ethic of resignation and despair that pervades the late works…” (154). That also made me cry. I also don’t believe any of it. Kurosawa had some dedication that was his version of love. To make a film was Kurosawa’s version of love. Through the making of a film, he felt something, and made us feel something, and that’s true even unto the last. So there, Richard Prince! I could hardly call “Madadayo” pessimistic!

Urggghhh! I say, read everything, then forget ninety percent of it, except for the “Dersu” passages in Nogami, (keep those real close-they’re lovely!) and the “Something” by Bock and Kurosawa (which, I believe-is the closest Kurosawa got to theory-and, guess what? It really is Kurosawa believing in the transformative, meaning-making of making art. Auteur theory anyone? Ya know, you can fight it all you want, but Kurosawa believed it! In “Interviews” he says, “Although human beings are incapable of of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth when you pretend to be other people. They often reveal much about themselves in a straightforward way. And, as their very auteur, I am certain that I did, too. After all, there is nothing thart says more about a creator than the work itself.”).

After you’ve thrown away most of it, except for the sweet passages that feel meaningful to you, and you’ve placed the books on the shelf for references on filmography, etc., as Kurosawa urged, “Go to the films” for the rest.