Kurosawa Review
To take in the magnificent career of a filmmaker as prolific and protean as Akira_Kurosawa in less than two hours may seem a daunting task, but writer-director Adam_Low has succeeded admirably in offering a moving and amazingly detailed portrait of both the man and the artist. The clips are well chosen (even if some films, like High and Low and The_Bad_Sleep_Well, get short shrift), the interviews informative (including some archival clips of the subject and his favorite actor, Toshiro_Mifune), and there are two superb touches: Paul_Scofield reading from Kurosawa's writings and a running visual motif of a downtown Tokyo building with a giant screen on its side running various scenes from older Kurosawa films. Though it would have been nice to have some of Kurosawa's American disciples, such as George_Lucas and Francis_Ford_Coppola, on hand, the late James_Coburn (who appeared in The_Magnificent_Seven, the remake of The_Seven_Samurai) and Clint_Eastwood (whose A Fistful of Dollars was a remake of Yojimbo) do offer the Yanks' perspective. The comments of Kurosawa's daughter and son, actor Tatsuya_Nakadai and director Kon_Ichikawa are well-placed, Donald_Richie (whose writings about Kurosawa helped to cement his international reputation) offers historical perspective, and then there is an unexpected bonus: Machiko_Kyo, the female lead of Rashomon, Kurosawa's breakthrough film, looking smashing as she and several members of that film's production team revisit one of the film's rural locations and reminisce. It's an inspired idea like that which lifts this film above the standard cut-and-paste "biographies" that litter cable/satellite TV stations these days. Tom Wiener, Rovi
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