Akira Essays

  • Akira Kurosawa's RAN

    995 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

  • Akira Kurosawa and Robert Zemeckis

    2128 Words  | 5 Pages

    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

    1443 Words  | 3 Pages

    "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

  • Akira Kurosawa Seven Samurai

    888 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

  • Akira Kurosawa's Throne Of Blood

    779 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

  • Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai

    1770 Words  | 4 Pages

    Japanese cinema. The aftermath of World War II and particularly the atomic bomb, and the subsequent American occupation left the country scarred, but filled with inspiration and eagerness to start over. One of the most iconic films of this era is Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" one of the most influential movies of all time, and the basis for a plethora productions, with John Sturges’ “The Magnificent Seven” being a direct adaptation. This influence became widely known, even at the time, as the

  • Rashomon And Blowup: A Study Of Truth

    1723 Words  | 4 Pages

    Rashomon and Blowup: A Study of Truth In a story, things are often not quite what they seem to be. Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon and Michaelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up are good examples of stories that are not what they first appear to be. Through the medium of film, these stories unfold in different and exiting ways that give us interesting arguments on the nature of truth and reality. Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon tells the story of a murder. It flashes back to the event four times, each time as told

  • Shakespeare's Macbeth and Kurosawa's Throne of Blood

    2045 Words  | 5 Pages

    Throne of Blood, the 1957 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

  • Rashomon

    1031 Words  | 3 Pages

    While the movie carries the same name, its plot and characters are derived from another story by the same author, titled In a Grove . The powerful scene settings in Rashomon, were enough to provoke Akira Kurosawa into the creation of a film, and the curiosity of those settings are what led me to read and interpret the story myself. After examination of the story, I perceived strong themes of naturalism which suggests that human nature and normality

  • Rashomon: Film Analysis

    1229 Words  | 3 Pages

    become suspect. This has inspired several plots in other movies, as well as causing the courts of law to make use of the term “the Rashomon effect” to describe the tendency of testimonies clashing with each other and creating a perplexing mystery. Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon tackles with the issue of subjective

  • Shakespeare's King Lear’s Descent into Madness: A Psychoanalytical Approach

    2510 Words  | 6 Pages

    Many of Shakespeare’s tragedies involve fallen heroes who inevitably have to go through journeys to resolve their issues or complete an ill begotten fate. Shakespeare’s play King Lear is no different. The play highlights the life of a king, his journey into madness, and the events that take place around him that leads up to his death. Several approaches have been taken to analyze and deconstruct the carefully embedded details unfolding King Lear’s demise. Similarly, the focus of this research

  • Goku is a better super hero than superman

    669 Words  | 2 Pages

    believe that Goku may just be one of the greatest super heroes that will ever exist, however he still is not very well known superhero such as Superman.Goku is a part of an alien race called saiyans, and is the main fictional character created by Akira Toriyama for the Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball GT series. Compared to Superman Goku is a better super hero, because he is both faster and stronger, he has faced far greater threats, and he has a better personality. First of all, Goku

  • The Jidaigeki Samurai Film Genre

    2157 Words  | 5 Pages

    of various scenes. The differences and commonalities between the samurai films with traditional values and the films that challenge those values will be analyzed clearly in the film trilogy: Samurai I, II and, III by Hiroshi Inagaki and Yojimbo by Akira Kurosawa. The contrasts and commonalities of the two films are in the protagonists’ appearance, personality, sword skill, their relationship with others, cinematography, politics, and themes. Samurai trilogy follows the life span of Takezo or

  • Rashomon Essay

    1236 Words  | 3 Pages

    Rashomon is a Japanese film that that was produced in 1950 by the director, Akira Kurosawa, which is considered one of the most important filmmaker in the history of cinema. Since early age, Akira Kurosawa had interest in samurai stories because his father was and shared his samurai experiences with Akira. In addition, writers such as Kanze Nobumitsu have said that Rashomon is an interpretation of the everyday life of the accident Japanese society. The old temple represents the ancient Raseimon gate

  • Seven Samurai Themes

    1791 Words  | 4 Pages

    Seven Samurai, directed and co-written by Akira Kurosawa is a grand tale and a pioneer film for its genre. The story takes place in 16th century Japan and focuses on a rag tag group of master less samurai known as 'Ronin' who ultimately come together to come to the aid of a poor farming village under the attack of plundering bandits.  The film follows the farmers needing to find samurai who are willing to work for three meals of rice a day.  They come across an elder samurai who accepts their offer

  • Analysis of Rashomon

    1088 Words  | 3 Pages

    The films of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa have had wide ranging influence over contemporary films, with his ronin films Seven Samurai and Yojimbo influencing countless westerns and mob movies. Arguably, however, Rashomon has been the most instrumental of all Kurosawa’s films because it asks a question that lies near the heart of all cinema: what is reality? Today, any consumer of television or cinema has seen various permutations of the plot of Rashomon numerous times, probably without realizing

  • Rashomon Essay

    540 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

  • Rashomon Comparison

    1796 Words  | 4 Pages

    In Akira Kurosawa’s film “Sanshiro Sugata” (1943) it follows a young man who wants to 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

  • Compare And Contrast Seven Samurai And The Magnificent Seven

    1000 Words  | 2 Pages

    Akira Kurosawa, legendary Japanese filmmaker who directed films like The Hidden Fortress which was a major inspiration for Star Wars, Yojimbo, Rashomon and many more, but his most well known film, The Seven Samurai is his best movie, it is rank 19 of Top Rated Movies in IMDB, so of course after the release of the film in America, Hollywood remade the film and titled it The Magnificent Seven. Because it is a remake The Magnificent Seven and The Seven Samurai both have many similarities in terms of

  • Gojira Research Paper

    1641 Words  | 4 Pages

    On the third of November in the year 1954, Toho studios, in the country of Japan, released a movie that changed their direction as a movie company and launched a very popular and successful film franchise. The movie was Gojira, and it went on to become the first in a long line of giant monster movies for Toho studios. The director of the movie, Ishirô Honda, drew inspirations from several areas to create this goliath monster born of radiation. However, throughout the long line of sequels Gojira,