Red Beard video essay: Healing Both Heart and Body

Video essayist (and I believe counsellor) My Little Thought Tree has published an excellent half-hour video essay that looks at Kurosawa’s Red Beard and discusses the healing process more generally. It considers the film’s approaches to healing and therapy and frames them in healthcare workers’ roles in that process, and their relationship with their patients.

Find it on YouTube:

Thanks, thats a really nice video essay.

I’ve often wondered why Red Beard seems to be so little regarded by so many film scholars. Perhaps it just feels too didactically emotional and old fashioned in its morality for many writers. I don’t know how its considered these days in Japan. But for me its always represented what I think is Kurosawa’s least appreciated quality as a film maker – the psychological realism of so many of his characters.