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
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
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
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
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
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
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
"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
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
In King Lear. Shakespeare uses imagery of great imaginative depth and resonance to convey his major themes and to heighten the readers experience of the play. There are some predominant image patterns. In my opinion, it is the imagery of animals and savage monsters that leave the most lasting impression. The imagination is filled with pictures of wild and menacing creatures, ravenous in their appetites, cruel in their instincts. The underlying emphasis in such imagery is on the vileness of which
The film Seven Samurai is about a village of farmers who have repeatedly suffered yearly raids by a group of merciless bandits. These bandits steal from the farmers and kidnap the women. Unable to protect themselves, the farmers decide to hire a samurai to do the job for them. This changes the course of their lives in numerous ways. Initially, not everyone in the village agrees with the idea of hiring a group of samurai to kill the bandits and protect them. They are indifferent about the situation
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
Rashomon Analysis Truth and lies are blurred in the film Rashomon where the contradiction of a person’s system of belief and actions are in a constant conflict. Characters in the film are faced with the offer of committing wicked and corrupt acts that clatter with their morals and principles. The film takes the form of an observational puzzle without an answer, engaging unreliable narrators and flashbacks through which recollection and reality become suspect. This has inspired several plots in other
Bridgette Simmer Honors English 2 Ms. Misko (draft) The Seventh Man Why does it seem like humans always hurt the ones they love the most? This is a question faced as the Seventh man tells his story. In “The Seventh Man”, a young ten year old boy loses his best friend from a giant wave and carries the guilt until he learns how to reconcile from the tragedy. The story provokes curiosity to see if anyone can truly rebound from a life altering tragedy. In “The Seventh Man”, Murakami uses foreshadowing
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
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 is shaped
Foreign films are often not as popular, especially among people who do not understand the language being spoken. Viewers claim they would rather watch a film, as opposed to reading it because of the provided subtitles. However, The Seven Samurai is a well done film in which the subtitles are not a distracting and the language barrier becomes unnoticed as viewers are engulfed in the dramatic plot. After a group of bandits make plans to capture a village, the villagers are panicked and request help
Yojiro Takita’s Departures (Okuribito) is a well directed piece of film that depicts the life of a once cellist turned mortician. This change not only sounds unusual printed but even more so for our main character Daigo Kobayashi. Within the film I experienced a look into what it means to have an “appropriate” job in Japan. I use quotations because the conflict between Daigo’s wife, friends, and himself were apparent, frightfully so. The whole movie can be looked at in comparison of social constructs
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