Akira Kurosawa (An Academic work of length)

I decided to watch two films by Akira Kurosawa primarily because I was already a bit familiar with his work in Seven Samurai, and wanted an excuse to watch another of his movies. In the end, I settled on watching Seven Samurai and Rashomon. I’ve been familiar with the Auteur Theory for a while now, having looked at it in several different classes, but I never really put too much thought into it. “Yeah, okay, this is an Akira Kurosawa movie, cool.”  That was always my kind of thought process. I never stopped to think about how there would be a question between who the real author was, between the screenwriter and the director. But when I read the chapter in the textbook, it came into focus for me, and allowed me to think about these two films with a bit of a different filter.

            Could I saw that the Auteur Theory helped me better understand Akira Kurosawa’s work? I don’t feel that I can honestly say yes or no without seeing all of his films. It did, however, allow me to notice things in both films. Both films that I saw were “jidai-geki”, or historical films. I felt fortunate having knowledge of Japanese culture (I was able to go to Japan in seventh grade, spent about three years studying the language, and have studied a good deal of Japanese cinema in various courses and personal interest) and history when watching both movies. With the background I was fortunate to have, I was able to see these historical stories as a strong embrace of Japanese history and culture. This was really my first foray into the idea of what Kurosawa was as an Auteur. To me, he seemed to be a man who loved his culture. Now there is a counter argument that some of his stories were based off of western culture and western stories from Shakespeare, etc., and that his films were perhaps some of the most “un-Asian” of cinema at the time, but I feel that that can all be ignored and it can be agreed upon that these films showed a great deal of interest and respect for the nation’s history, mostly the Feudal age. In the end, I thought of the idea of an Auteur being one who simply makes one movie over and over again, and couldn’t help but notice the love affair with this specific time period.

            There was more in common between these two movies than just the time period, however. I was watching Rashomon after I had seen Seven Samurai and every once in a while I had to stop and say: “now that was familiar.” Now both of these two films focused on a samurai or several samurai, or the people around samurai (An important note: these aren’t just “samurai”, these films – extending beyond the ones talked about here – focus on ronin, samurai without a master, wanderers. Now Rashomon does not say that our murdered samurai is a ronin, but he is wandering around with his wife. This idea of an expert in something without a real place in his world could say a lot, but I’m not skilled or knowledgeable enough in either Kurosawa’s life or the lives of ronin to give any kind of viable comparison.) But there were other subtle touches. Both films had a strong scene in a seemingly populated area, the city in which villagers try to find samurai in Seven Samurai or the court in Rashomon, but for both, the real meat of the story takes place in some small, remote area. For Seven Samurai, the bulk of the tale takes place in a small, far-off, flanked by mountains farming town. Rashomon takes place mostly on an abandoned, half destroyed city gate and in a small grove in the mountains. So in both films we not only have a similar looking environment, a natural wooded environment in the mountains, but we also have a feeling of isolation, or at least remote location. You get the feeling that these settings are not being used in either case to give a large psychological reading of solitude or the like, but really serve the story. Seven Samurai needs the small town to be where it is so that the bandits can get away with constantly robbing a small town, and later for the villagers to give a believable defense utilizing their surroundings and geography. In Rashomon, the story requires a small hidden grove so that there would be no witnesses outside of who was involved, so that the characters could all give conflicting accounts. Sure, there are other things to be said about this choice of isolated areas in both films, but I was surprised how neither of the films would have worked on a simple plot level if it weren’t for these locations. But what does this kind of thing say about Kurosawa as an Auteur? In my opinion, it shows that he has a strong interest in making sure that the plot itself is cohesive, that it makes sense, that it is believable. He gives care and attention to the plot, which is something that many directors might not care so much about. It’s interesting to think about how detailed attention to the story would set a director apart form others, but in my experience in this time period, making sure the plot made complete sense in just about every fashion didn’t necessarily seem to be first on the “to-do” list of directors.

            Many directors of the time seemed to ask, “What is my film saying?” “How can I show this,” or “How can I evolve the form?” Kurosawa seems to ask these same questions as well, but within a frame of, “ How can this all make sense within the story itself?” But what else made Kurosawa a real penman with his camera? How did he “write” with his films?

            Well first, we can have an almost literal analysis. I remembered back to when I saw Seven Samurai for the first time in my high school Japanese class, about five years ago. At that time, I was starting to do a lot of “video production” so as I watched this old black-and-white film from 1954; I was surprised at how impressed I was with many of the fluid camera movements. I saw the same thing recently as I watched Rashomon, and was once again impressed with how artistically the camera slid around the trees and in and out of the characters interactions with each other. It reminded me of a calligraphy brush. How funny it is that camera movements can be literally related to a form of writing, that Kurosawa can be a literal caméra-stylo. This definitely helped me see him as a true Auteur; that his style and touch extended to theme, story, and even camera movement.

            Allow me to return to a previous thought and expand on it. As was mentioned, both of these films reflect a certain respect and understanding of the Japanese culture. That being said, I found that another topic, or theme for Kurosawa was one of honor, especially honor in death. Rashomon fascinated me so much in how each person that testified in the death of the samurai, even the ghost himself through medium, took credit for the murder. It is only in the final account, the one of the woodcutter/perhaps thief that we see what (possibly) really happened. Each character involved showed to be a sniveling coward, selfish and embarrassed of what they had done and demanding the death of another to release themselves from the shame of the situation. The samurai himself claims to have committed suicide to avoid them embarrassment of crying out: “I don’t want to die!” right before being run through by the bandit Tajomaru.

Seven Samurai has a strong focus on the frustration of the samurai with the villagers that have hired them, so many acting as cowards, willing to sacrifice each other for their own safety, unwilling to fight. After all is said and done, the three remaining samurai look at each other in the rain, tired and saddened. Kambei Shimada, our lead character, looks at his long time companion and says with great disappointment: “Again, we’ve survived.” Now of course this can be looked at as standard Japanese culture, but this is obviously a recurring theme in the work of Kurosawa, and it not only shows cowardice, but also heroism, and glorifies those willing to sacrifice themselves for others, or for honor.

            Now the question of actors must be addressed. Rashomon and Seven Samurai share a great deal of the same actors. Most of the main characters in one are main characters in the other, and many actors were used in several other Kurosawa films. I had to consider the question; does this discredit my growing feeling that Kurosawa was a true Auteur? Does this lend itself to the idea that his works were more of a recurring collaboration? I came to the conclusion that no, it did not. The use of these actors, in my opinion, showed trust on Kurosawa’s part, which these actors could adhere to his vision, that they were more like essential tools that could be depended on. There is probably an argument against this, but in the end, I only saw it as more proof of Kurosawa’s penmanship.

            In the end, I must conclude that the Auteur theory did in fact help me knot only understand these movies as Kurosawa films, but to appreciate and enjoy them more, almost like noticing the recurring traits of an old friend, little nods to each other that those who were familiar with the artist could really appreciate, even if they were put in rather subconsciously.