Akira Kurosawa: 100

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Akira Kurosawa was born 100 years ago today. He died in 1998, but still lives through his catalog of films, which are a kind of temple all filmmakers and lovers of film must make a pilgrimage to visit. However, it isn't fair to narrow it down to the love of film, but rather, the love of life, and the meaning of life.


Here is a bit I wrote about my first experience with a Kurosawa film...

We were visiting my wife’s parents on Chebeague Island off of Maine in January or February many years ago. They were house-sitting a beautiful old home named “Ashley”. In the summer, thousands of people make this island their home, but in the dead of winter, there were no more than 300 residents…isolated, cold, and quiet. Even though the general store and restaurant were closed for winter, the “town hall” and library remained open to the public. While browsing the VHS tapes one afternoon, a conversation was struck up between myself and a librarian. I knew very little about foreign film at that time, but I knew just enough to pretend I knew much about Akira Kurosawa and that “Seven Samurai” is indeed a “great” film, even though I had never seen it, or any other Kurosawa film. :-) Fortunately, this impressed the librarian enough to invite me to the community film night, since “Rashomon” was next in the series of selected films. So I show up to this thing awkward, vulnerable, and green in light of this community of mostly retired professors and liberated thinkers. I began thinking, “What the fuck did I get myself into? Are they going to ask me what I think about the film? Why did I pretend to know about Akira Kurosawa?” But I was also anticipating the initial experience of watching this film, yet not really knowing what to expect. One of the initial feelings I remember was boredom (Boooooo – I know), because I had never seen anything with the style of a silent film, and except for Kazan’s “On The Waterfront” and Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”, I hadn’t really even enjoyed many “classics”, unless they were faster paced like Hitchcock’s films. So this 90 minute film felt like three hours. Discussion ensued, but I didn’t listen. I didn’t speak their language. However, it seemed symbolic of the film itself, as I walked away in a fog, trying to put the pieces together. Surrounded by snow, pines, and darkness…sucking in the cold air…considering the apparently awful nature of man…on an island that seemed to isolate us from that very nature…wondering what the fuck it could mean…and wondering what direction I was walking…and why. Film was never the same after that. Neither was I.

A few quotes about Kurosawa from a few of my other favorite directors...

American director Sidney Lumet said: "Kurosawa never affected me directly in terms of my own movie-making because I never would have presumed that I was capable of that perception and that vision."

Swedish director Ingmar Bergman said of Kurosawa: "Now I want to make it plain that The Virgin Spring must be regarded as an aberration. It's touristic, a lousy imitation of Kurosawa."

Martin Scorsese said of Kurasawa: "His influence on filmmakers throughout the entire world is so profound as to be almost incomparable."

Francis Ford Coppola paid his own tribute, saying: "One thing that distinguishes Akira Kurosawa that he didn't make a masterpiece or two masterpieces, he made, you know,eight masterpieces."

"I can't afford to hate people. I don't have that kind of time."

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