Akira Kurosawa and Robert Zemeckis “As the term suggests, an auteur is an author, someone whose aesthetic sensibilities and impact are most important in the creation of a text. With literary texts, discerning authorship is usually no problem. But with collaborative art forms, such as film, deciding on authorship is much more complicated. Generally speaking, film theorists have concluded that it is the director of a film who is the auteur, the most important creative figure. But auteur theory is
"Rashomon" by Akira Kurosawa numerous characters display dissimilar testimony about a particular event and they all claim to have the story straight. To begin, a wood cutter who remains nameless is in the forest when he comes across a lady's hat, a gentlemen's hat, a piece of rope, an amulet case with red lining and finally a dead body in the thicket. Upon seeing all this he runs immediately to the police to report what he has found. The police do some investigating and find the man who they believed
Since its initial 1954 release Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai has always been considered one of the greatest motion pictures of all time. In this Japanese action epic Kurosawa set the standard for modern action, editing, and storytelling. The setup of the story is as follows: a poor farm village that struggles to survive is plagued by a ruthless group of bandits. Fed up with their oppressors the villagers go to the city to recruit samurai to help them defeat the bandits once and for all. From this
In Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata, the four members of the Sasaki family are intimately followed after a tragic event affects the father early in the film. Due to the catastrophic nature of the event, the audience is quickly exposed to the individual secrets of the Sasaki family and how a family’s values could be perceived as decomposing in modern Japan. As the story progresses, each family member encounters or exposes their own obstacles in life, leading to a conclusion which, is ultimately left
Kurosawa uses a weighty sound space containing amplified sounds or unseen sound sources that enhance the images presented to the viewer. Cure's background ambient noise keenly conveys a certain mood to lower the viewer's defenses in watching such a thriller film. The overall sound space for most of the movie has been perfectly described as “unnerving atmosphere of silent dread that hangs over nearly every frame of the film” (Pizzello). Amplified sounds, such as a washing machine or a faucet, are
version, as well as with the flutes of Noh, a traditional, exaggerated style of Japanese theater. The ingredient of the Noh flutes certainly brought the play nearer to Japanese culture, which in turn made it more believable in its new setting. Kurosawa also dressed the players in the costume of the ancient samurai warriors, including the various-sized lunar disks on the helmets, katana swords, and the uniquely designed armor. Characters such as Lady Asaji, who are dressed in timely garb and
Arsen’evitch Tarkovsky fall into the separate genre of cinematic creations: they are more than drama or psychological thriller, more than philosophical cinema. Although Tarkovsky’s work has been deeply influenced with such prominent film directors as Kurosawa, Bunuel or Antonioni, the poetry of his father, Arseniy Tarkovsky, Boris Pasternak and many other Russian poets and writers, his films manage to form something completely unique to the mind of their director, convey a diaphanous psychological message
Pulse Pulse is superficially many movies. It is a 2001 vehicle for director Kiyoshi Kurosawa to gain international reputation. It is a teen horror movie. It is a ghost story. How one reads this movie determines, to a large extent, what one sees in it. And while this means we cannot hope to discover one already present Truth waiting for us in the ebbs and flows image and sound that comprise the film, we can still interpret film and give contesting interpretations over the facts and implications
transcription here is used while maintaining the biological denotative sense—the process where information is copied from one entity, and used as the basis for the fruition of an entirely new entity bearing the familiar inherent insignia of its predecessor. Kurosawa, while adjusting the events that occur in the original, has taken Shakespeare’s Macbeth and more than successfully produced an adaptation rich in Japanese aesthetic, history, and devices used in the Japanese style of storytelling. Kurosawa’s Throne
filming that is French for “staging the shot”, which is referring to everything in front of the camera. Director Kurosawa understood this style and used it in High and Low (Kurosawa, 1962). He used several Mise en scene techniques such as closed composition, space manipulation, and lighting to compliment the crime thriller story. Closed composition is one of the main themes that Kurosawa uses throughout the movie. He chooses to keep the scenes tight and in close quarters mostly. This is seen predominately
harder we seek for truth, the less there is to discover. Both films give us intriguing insights into the nature of truth. From Rashomon we see the argument that absolute truth cannot be discovered, that the notion of truth itself is a decaying thing. Kurosawa seems to argue that truth may in fact be a relative thing and that a whole truth, a pure truth can never be discovered. Antonioni's Blowup seems to argue that truth is like Thomas's blow up - to fix upon and blow up a piece of reality, serves only
filmed translation of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, was made in Japan, written in Japanese by Shinobu Hashimoto, Ryuzo Kikushima, Akira Kurosowa and Hideo Oguni and directed by Akira Kurosawa. It has many times been called an adaptation of Macbeth, however it is not. As storytellers have done since time began, Kurosawa took a story and made it his own: translating a play text into another medium; a separate setting; a differing culture in a completely different style and for a completely contrasting
Of all the filmmakers whose work I need to familiarize myself with, and there are far too many, Akira Kurosawa is perhaps the one who I most want to become acquainted with. I don’t know what it is about Kurosawa, but it seems like his films would interested me. With so many purported classics amongst his filmography, “Throne of Blood” seemed like as good a place as any to start. Although I liked the film, I hope certain elements of it aren’t representative of Kurosawa’s work. Set in feudal Japan
Decoration, Black-and-White and Best Costume Design, Black-and-White), while Kurosawa won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
Yojimbo (Kurosawa, 1961) presents an overall stronger story than A Fistful of Dollars (Leone, 1964) as it focuses less on the action sequences on more on character development. In particular A Fistful of Dollars (Leone, 1964) appears to depict some of the more meaningful scenes with an excessive amount of swashbuckling that ultimately detracts from the significance of particular scenes. This can be seen in the respective scenes of both films when the two factions are sparring with one another near
While analyzing Kurosawa Akira’s Rashomon in the essay, “Irreconcilable Realities”, Aaron M. Kerner writes, “The substance of the film hinges on what is irreconcilable, and “resolving” the narrative would run contrary to the film’s central concern.” In this quote, Kerner is addressing the fact that the film does not have a conclusion where the audience knows the truth about the characters in the film. Rashomon instead addresses the natures of reality and real life through his filming of this unusual
Akira Kurosawa's RAN In this explication of this movie RAN several items will be discussed. Culturally the movie will be critiqued on how the Japanese culture is shown throughout the movie, and the structure of how the characters progress throughout the movie. The conflict between characters will also be discussed in reference to the obstacles they face and how they deal with them. This movie deals mainly with loyalty and tradition (bushido), and how a traditional Japanese family handles not only
learn the ways of Judo, but instead he goes on to learn more about himself. Even though this film had scenes that were taken away from it, because of the censorship the government placed on cinema during that wartime in japan. It shows what ability Kurosawa had in telling a story in way that would make audience think. There are five major fight sequences in this that repentant the traces of the moral growth of the protagonist. As the film goes on you can tell that the protagonist character becomes more
Art is not art without meaning; this rule applies to all forms of art, including film. Rashomon, the Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa in 1950, has a meaning that fits in with most other art of the time. The purpose is one which falls into a broader movement of art: modernism. Modernist literature makes use of unorthodox plot points and grim themes to create a distinct class of art unlike all preceding works. Rashomon’s unconventional structure and style and outlook on the world and humanity
Kurosawa critiques this fixed positions of social classes that were present during the Tokugawa period through the faux samurai, Kikuchiyo (Yoshimoto 2000). He was born a farmer and lacks the mannerisms of a samurai, such as self-discipline (Yoshimoto 2000)