Walking Kurosawa's Road: The Idiot

The Idiot (aka Hakuchi, aka 白痴) (Akira Kurosawa, 1951)

"Dostoevsky wanted to portray a genuinely good man. Ironically, he chose an idiot for his hero. But a truly good man may appear as an idiot to others. This is a story of the ruin of a pure and simple man."

Kurosawa's nearly three hour adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's semi-autobiographical novel (it was originally 4 hours 46 minutes before the distributor cut it down*), but relocated to perpetually snowed-under modern-day Sapporo Japan, has the feel of a film that has been sashimied by a studio looking to keep the highlights—apparently most of the 99 minutes of cuts is in the first few reels. It certainly feels that way with several overly-expository interstitials, one voice-over commentary, and brutally inserted swipe-transitions, one party sequence has them every seven seconds or so without any sort of transition indicated for time or space. Yes, the screen-wipes feel like Kurosawa moves, but one doubts that he'd have used them so frequently and in such places that didn't need them other than to cut time.

The film is in two parts—chapters, if you will—separated by a convalescence from an epileptic seizure by the titular character, Kinji Kameda (Masayuki Mori), a war veteran who was nearly executed as a war criminal but pardoned at the last minute and now suffers from "epileptic hysteria" (or "idiocy" as described in the film among the laymen). At the start of the first chapter (entitled "Love and Agony"), Kameda is returning home to Sapporo by train after rehabilitation in an asylum, his sleep interrupted by nightmares of waiting for his execution. One of those outbursts wakes up self-described "lout" Denkichi Akama (Toshirô Mifune), who would normally cuff one such as Kameda for annoying him, but the two strike up a friendship of sorts—after all, both are going to the same town.

Their purposes couldn't be more different: Kameda is returning home for the first time since the war, his father is dead, and he is going to meet with Mr. Ono (Takashi Shimura), his "only relative in the world". We'll get to Ono and his family in a minute, but Akama's story is that of a prodigal son. His father was abusive—Akama mentions that he hasn't laughed in years due to his childhood, but two things have brought him happiness: 1) meeting with the friendly Kameda on the train and 2) his meeting Taeko Nasu (Setsuko Hara), whom he met six months earlier. Even though she had been a concubine to the wealthy businessman Tohata (Eijirô Yanagi) since the age of 14—years in which Tohata abused her—Akama was so entranced that he stole money from his wealthy father to buy her a diamond ring. At that time, Taeko ran away from her oppressor and Akama fled the wrath of his father over the theft. His father now dead, Akama is returning to claim his inheritance and to find Taeko again. So, two fatherless men, untethered from their past, are returning home.

In a store-front window, they come across a portrait of Taeko, and Kameda is overtaken by the sadness that he can see in her eyes—Kameda's war-time experience has given him, inspired by the relief he felt at his death sentence being commuted, a gentle spirit reverent of all life, no matter the circumstances. He doesn't judge, as he was judged, and he is always first to see the good in whoever he meets, and responds with heartfelt empathy. Even a "lout" like Akama, he feels great affection for, and, unreservedly, despite Akama's past values him as a friend, something Akama has never known before in his life. Akama can't see the pain behind the eyes of Taeko's portrait, but he admires Kameda's sensitivity.

There are complications—of course, there are complications, as this is Russian Literature, after all, even if set in Japan!—involving just about everybody: Tohata is offering a ¥600,000 dowry to whomever will marry Taeko in order to disassociate himself from her and her bad public persona, and his own wretched behavior (of course!) and guess who's going to take him up on the offer? 

No, you'd be wrong if you thought Akama—this is Russian Literature, not a Grimm's Fairy Tale! Kayama (Minoru Chiaki) is willing to marry her! Who's Kayama? He's the guy renting a room to Kameda...at the behest of Mr. Ono, who also happens to be his employer. That's how our friend Kameda gets mixed up in all this! And, of course, when Kameda and Taeko meet, she's drawn to him because he's the only person in town who doesn't treat her like "used goods", and, in fact, speaks to her with warmth and empathy and no judgment.

Emotions run so high that they can become quite comical,
like this party-guest's shocked reaction to Kameda's selflessness.

All of this happens at the planned engagement party for Kayama and Taeko, much to the consternation of Kayama, Tohata, and Ono and the shocked amazement of the party guests, who act just like the gossipy town-hens in one of John Ford's movies. We won't even get into what happens when Akama (remember him? Mifune!) busts into the party with his gang of cut-throats and offers ¥1,000,000 for Taeko.

Leave it at that, because even there, it gets more complicated without the plot advancing. Because we haven't even gotten into people's psyches and second-guessing each other yet. Both Kameda and Akama love Taeko. Taeko loves Akama but realizes that Kameda is the better man, but since she's a concubine, she thinks she doesn't deserve a better man, but how can she settle for Akama when she's met Kameda, whom she doesn't want to shackle with a concubine and especially when Akama loves Taeko enough that even Kameda thinks she should be with him, except that Taeko thinks he deserves someone better, who is Ayako (Yoshiko Kuga)

Ayako? Who's Ayako?

Well, that is dealt with a bit in Part One, and even more in the second part, "Love and Loathing."  Ayako is Mr. Ono's youngest daughter, who is a bit of a brat and whose emotions turn on a dime, but is still quite a bit taken with Kameda, even though she still keeps referring to him as "an idiot", and who (by the way) is desired by Kayama (the guy who was supposed to marry Taeko?).

Small town, that Sapporo...

To his eternal credit, Kurosawa manages to keep this three-wedding-ring circus straight and easily understood by an audience, even at a length of nearly 3 hours. His compositions are fairly consistently triangular, emphasizing that two people in the frame is company, but three is a crowd, with no straight back-and-forth, but a constant caroming off into odd directions. Nobody thinks to ask what another person might want; they just make the decisions for them, and that can't come to any good. Extended periods of dialogue keep the shifting affections and best intentions clear enough, even if nobody spends any time questioning their decisions. One would think that with emotions at such a high boil, sometime they might simmer to a point of vacillation. But, no, people come to their conclusions and, like the ornate snow encrusting everything in the city, they remain frozen in place.

What works against the story...is the story. The high dramatics are sometimes so over-the-top that one is forced to suppress both the giddiness rising up in one's consciousness and the objective sensibility that might curb the more histrionic decisions that are come to in the course of the movie. Maybe that cut footage might have neutered some of the extremes in the film, but one doubts it, and by the time one gets nearer the end of the film, things have gone to such an extreme that one simple gives up and accepts that this is where the story will go, despite one's misgivings.

Despite its length, despite its histrionics, despite all of that, it was one of Japan's most 10 popular movies that year (it would not be released in the United States until 1963—indeed, the year of The Idiot's release in Japan would see only the first of Kurosawa's films to make its way to the United States, which was Rashomon which premiered here December 26, 1951). Its reputation is a bit dimmer than his other films, but, then, any film would when sandwiched between Rashomon, his previous film, and his next film, which would be one of the greatest—if not the greatest—films Kurosawa ever made.

* Kurosawa didn't want to edit it, but suggested it be released in two parts, instead. The studio insisted it should be one release with the film cut in half. "In that case," Kurosawa answered back, "better cut it length-wise." 

 

When working for the studio again in 1991, Kurosawa looked for the missing pieces...to no avail.

Walking Kurosawa's Road: Rashomon (1950)

The inability to write about the films of Akira Kurosawa to my satisfaction led me to to take a different path: start at the beginning, take each film in sequence, one after the other, and watch the progression of the man from film-maker to Master. I'm hoping I can write more intelligently and more knowledgeably about his work by, step by step, Walking Kurosawa's Road.

Rashomon (aka Rashômon aka 羅生門) (Akira Kurosawa, 1950) It all changed here. This is the point—and this is the film—where Kurosawa got "noticed" by an international audience. Oh, he'd been toiling in the fields for a decade. But a war got in the way. Then, an occupation, with its incumbent censorships. Lack of distribution and maybe a ticklish subject matter or two that had kept his films on the island also hindered the world knowing what Japan had known—they had a great film-maker in their midst. One who'd been watching other countries' films with interest, reading other culture's writers, and began melding and refining and merging his own culture with them to create something new and richer, an alloyed kind of film that spoke across divides, across seas and oceans and spoke to everyone.

 

He'd already made great films. Few had seen them. Rashomon, however, was a film that was so good, that happenstance of availability fell by the way-side. 

 

Rashomon was actively sought out.

 

It was, evidently, enough for America's Academy of Motion Pictures to give it an "Honorary Oscar" (in 1952) for "most outstanding foreign language film" and, eventually, to create a category to recognize excellence in "foreign films." Maybe to avoid the competition.

"I don't understand. I just don't understand. I don't understand it at all." 

A woodcutter (Takashi Shimura), a commoner (Kichijirô Ueda), and a priest (Minoru Chiaki)—from Kiyomizu Temple—sit out a down-pour at the ruined Rashômon gatehouse. The newly-arrived commoner finds the woodcutter and the priest in a confused stupor over "a strange story," "a horrible story" that they've just heard at the courtyard garden. A story, the priest says that "may finally make me lose my faith in the human soul."

 

The woodcutter and the priest have just from court where they have testified in a trial against a thief, Tajômaru (Toshirô Mifune), accused of rape and murder.

 

The Testimony

The woodcutter explains how three days previously he was walking the road between Sekiyama and Yamashina, when he stumbled on a woman's hat in the bushes, a trampled samurai cap, some cut rope, an amulet case...and a dead body.  

 

The priest tells of how he encountered the victims, a samurai and his wife (Machiko Kyô and Masayuki Mori) on that fateful road the day of the crimes.

Tajômaru, the bandit, is up next. In the woodcutter's telling of the trial, he is bound but defiant, his testimony is filled with braggadocio and contains little that doesn't make him seem a formidable man. The bandit tells of seeing the samurai and his wife on the road, and lusting after the woman, lured the samurai away with the promise of selling ancient swords. He attacked the samurai and tied him to a tree-stump. Then, went to the wife and told her the samurai had taken sick and leads her to the forest to where she sees him tied up and helpless.  

 

Kurosawa then starts a sequence of shots that sets up the power-dynamic between the trio as they glance at each other, realizing and assessing the situation. Stylized, almost ritualized, if you ever wondered where Sergio Leone got his ideas for staging his climactic stand-offs, it's here. The sequence ends with the camera moving around the wife's head, as Leone circled Henry Fonda's in Once Upon a Time in the West.

The wife, seeing her husband bound and helpless, takes matters into her own hands and attacks the bandit with a knife, but he overpowers her and rapes her. The wife, in her grief and shame, begs the bandit to duel her husband for the events, saying that she will go with whoever wins the battle. The men fight a masterful duel "crossing swords 23 times" according to the bandit (according to the woodcutter), but in the end, the bandit wins the battle. The wife has run off. He takes the samurai's sword and leaves.

 

The priest concludes that men lie because they are weak.

The wife then testifies on the events (as related by the priest). She says that after the assault, the bandit left, and she freed her husband. She begs her husband for forgiveness, but he only looks at her contemptuously, blaming her for the assault. She then tells her husband to kill her and relieve her of the shame, but  the husband does not move, continuing staring at her. In her distress, the woman faints. When she recovers, he husband is dead, stabbed in the chest with her own knife. She flees the scene, attempts to drown herself, but fails.

The commoner hears all this and contemptuously says that women use tears to hide their lies.

The samurai's story is heard through a medium (inserting one more layer of narrative prejudice). The samurai says that, after the assault, the bandit offered to marry the wife, which she accepted, but only if the bandit killed her husband. This angers the bandit who drags the wife before the samurai and makes him an offer: release the wife or kill her. The wife runs off with the bandit pursuing her, but he loses her in the woods. He returns to the samurai, releases him and apologizes, leaving the samurai alone. The samurai, defeated, dishonored, kills himself with his wife's dagger.

 

But, the spirit-samurai makes the assertion that the dagger was taken from his chest, although he couldn't identify who.

Who is right? Who is telling the truth? There is no question that Tajômaru is guilty of the crimes of stealing and rape—but the murder? Did he kill the samurai? Did the wife? Was it suicide? Those are the practical questions in Rashomon, and, unfortunately for those looking for absolute truths, the testimony and evidence are not conclusive. We've seen (or heard) the witness testimony and they conflict, due to circumstance, emotion, trauma, societal rigors, and with the ramifications of what had happened.

The truth is, there is one more version of the story in Rashomon. One more interpretation of events. But, one can't even trust that. Ultimately, this is not a detective story that reveals the truth at the end (and Kurosawa did have a yen for detective stories). At its core, it is a tale about how enigmatic truth is. Truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth may be sworn to in courts of law, but they are a nearly unattainable goal, especially couched in a story format. Stories, in and of themselves, are interpretive, hued by perspective, the version of events, and who is doing the telling. Court lawyers are masters of spinning the truth, shading it, undercutting it, sewing doubt.

But, there are no lawyers in Rashomon, just common people...and a priest, who is sustained more on faith than proof. So, when all is said...and done...we are still left questioning what we have seen, with no reckoning of justice (whatever that is) being done or of a resolution in the tenuous balance between good and bad. There's no moral here in this telling of the tale and it's no fable. Ultimately, Kurosawa presents the argument that no film, no picture...no art?...can be trusted for truth as it's all interpretive, all suggestive. And though movies and their makers may strive for verisimilitude, truth will be forever out of reach.

 

All we can ask for is the good intention, the kind act, the unselfish sacrifice, the question "Can I help?" even knowing that truth cannot be trusted in anyone else but ourselves...if we're being true to ourselves. It's like a ray of sunlight dappling through the canopy of a forest. All the better to see ourselves true. 

Walking Kurosawa's Road: Scandal (1950)

The inability to write about the films of Akira Kurosawa to my satisfaction led me to to take a different path: start at the beginning, take each film in sequence, one after the other, and watch the progression of the man from film-maker to Master. I'm hoping I can write more intelligently and more knowledgeably about his work by, step by step, Walking Kurosawa's Road.

 

Scandal (aka "Shūbun" aka 醜聞,  Akira Kurosawa, 1950) The changes that had come over Japan in the post-War occupation had been well-documented in the early works of Kurosawa, but with this film, the director would look at what he saw as the corruption of the Japanese soul, certainly spurred by Western influences, but more for the hunger to make a "big kill". 1950's Scandal can be considered just as pertinent today with its focus on the "bread and circuses" world of celebrity (earned or not) and notoriety, "The price you pay for being famous..." and the manufacture of "fake news" for monetary gain, or gain of any kind. It would lament the fate of honesty when beset on all sides by the forces of moral corruption.

 

It's a very simple story, but with internal complexities, and deft dialogue exchanges that would fit neatly into a film made today. In fact, I wish a lot of people would see it these days. Why that is, after a recap:

Ichiro Aoye (Toshirô Mifune) is spending the day at one of his favorite places, Kappazawa, painting one of his impressionistic works on a favorite theme. He is surrounded by locals who look on in curiosity, commenting on the work in progress. Critics. They are joined by Miyako Saijo (Shirley Yamaguchi), a classical singer, who has missed her bus on the way to a resort hotel in Kaminoyu, and Aoye offers to give her a ride on his motorcycle, as they are staying at the same place. Now, Miyako is a big deal, certainly bigger than a successful artist, and when they get to the resort, she's approached by paparatchi from the scandal sheet "Amour" for an interview, which she refuses, as she is on a retreat and is generally shy of publicity. This does not sit well with the photographers, who are determined to get something to print one way or another.

Their opportunity comes when Miyako and Aoye innocently share some tea on her balcony. The photog's snap away and take it back to their publisher, Hori (Eitarô Ozawa), who publishes the photos with a salacious story—"The Love Story of Miyako Saijo"—which sells flies off the shelves and sets tongues wagging. Aoye returns to town and continues to paint, planning a showing. But, he is recognized on the street from the story, which he knows nothing about, and he motor-bikes over to the Amour offices, demanding to see the latest issue. The editor, Asai (Shin'ichi Himori) gives him a copy and Aoye reads, appalled. He attacks Asai and threatens legal action and stomps out.

Aoye fully intends to sue, but when he approaches Miyako, she is reluctant as she is a private person and doesn't want to encourage further rumors—“I don’t want popularity without respect. I won’t be a freak on display!” But, Aoye holds a press conference condemning the story as lies, while Hori holds his own gathering, standing by his story and casting aspersions on Aoye to drive up circulation. Aoye has trouble finding a lawyer, but the down and out Otokichi Hiruta (Takashi Shimura) approaches him, expressing sympathy and promoting a lawsuit as a cause célèbre against moral corruption. Aoye is doubtful of how successful Hiruta's work would be, but when he visits the attorney's home, he meets the man's tubercular daughter (Yôko Katsuragi) and has a change of heart, even convincing Miyako to be a part of the lawsuit.

The issue of Aoye/Saijo v. Amour Magazine is a pretty cut and dried case of moral good versus evil and audiences would have already picked sides (if they had any conscience at all), so Kurosawa takes the focus off that and switches to the lawyer Hiruta as the character that dominates the last half of the film—a man of divided loyalties (but for a good cause), who runs the risk of ruining the case and letting the slanderers getting off free. Obviously, this was not something Kurosawa was in favor of, as the movie was a condemnation of the "verbal gangsterism" of a Western influenced press (“This was not freedom of expression, I felt, it was violence against a person on the part of those who possess the weapon of publicity. I felt that this new tendency had to be stamped out before it could spread.”). In the same way he showed the increasing prevalence on Japanese culture by including Western songs, like Christmas carols, "Auld Lang Syne", and even "Buttons and Bows" ("East is East and West is West," indeed!).

But, Kurosawa is an excellent storyteller interested in telling an interesting story, as well as—since we're on this good versus evil road—being in sympathy with the good. That lawyer, with his complicated morals and divided loyalties, seemed more in tune with the Japanese he wanted to speak to—the ones who supported the war effort and the ones who sacrificed principle in the post-war chaos—that they could walk the better path and atone and make a better world for the country, rather than the dog-eat-dog one he saw it become. Such a story can come off as a bit preachy, not unlike "A Christmas Carol," and Scandal does for a stretch, but given the wretched cynicism of the Amour publisher character, perhaps it's needed.

One looks at the internet now, in this country, and at the cynical bodies of the legislatures that seem only concerned with lining their pockets and winning no matter what freedoms they step on, and one can only say that Kurosawa's film is still relevant, still truthful, still needed, but laments that the proudly corrupt would just scoff and dismiss (those bastards).

This would be Kurosawa's last film in what most film scholars call his early period; his next film would move away from the present day of Japan and move back into history and Myth and would be released the same year in Japan, but, more importantly, it would be the first of his films released to the West within a year of its Japanese debut (Kurosawa's films were previously withheld, due to either censorship by Japan's American occupiers, or for its controversial content—Drunken Angel made its American debut in 1959, Stray Dog premiered in 1963, The Quiet Duel in 1979, One Wonderful Sunday in 1982!). That next film would see Kurosawa recognized throughout the world as an exceptional voice in the cinema, and start the long string of films most associated with the name Akira Kurosawa.

Walking Kurosawa's Road: Stray Dog

The inability to write about the films of Akira Kurosawa to my satisfaction led me to to take a different path: start at the beginning, take each film in sequence, one after the other, and watch the progression of the man from film-maker to Master. I'm hoping I can write more intelligently and more knowledgeably about his work by, step by step, Walking Kurosawa's Road.

Stray Dog (aka "Nora inu," aka 野良犬, Akira Kurosawa, 1949) Detective Murakami (Toshirô Mifune) has just started with the Homicide division when, after some target practice he loses his service pistol, a Colt, fully loaded, when he's pick-pocketed on a trolley. Maybe he should have had a holster for it, rather than kept it in his jacket pocket. But, it's hot and he was up all night on a stake-out, and he's a rookie.

Plus, it's tough to be at your best in all the heat, which is blasting the city. That probably had something to do with why he couldn't catch the thief when he noticed the pistol was gone, moments after it was lifted. He reports the weapon stolen, and, shamed, he starts his own investigation, going undercover for days to try and track it down—a bravura eight-minute sequence done without dialog. While he goes about the underbelly of Tokyo in his quest, the urgency for results starts to weigh on him even more. The division's forensics department matches a bullet from his gun with an armed robbery, his first break in the case but he takes no joy in it. The loss is still Murakami's responsibility and he worries that his gun will be used in worse crimes.

Murakami's undercover work pays off when he's able to follow a line to a dance-hall floozy who's a black marketer who trades guns for ration cards. He takes her in for questioning, but he makes a lot of what one would call "rookie mistakes" in his anxiousness to get a line on his gun. His superiors suggest he paired up with a more seasoned detective, Satō (Takashi Shimura), who does his own questioning of the girl—she's a bit vague on details like names and such, but she gives just enough information that the two detectives are able to track her supplier to a baseball stadium, where he's arrested and a name obtained from a ration card.

They've got a name—Yusa—but, not the man. They're able to find out that he's a war veteran who's returned to civilian life, but couldn't make a go of it and has turned to petty theft. For Murakami, this motivation only reflects that the two men have similar backgrounds, and, were it not for his own better angels, he might have ended up just as Yusa. Interviews and research get them closer to him, but he still remains illusive. The culprit's sister has lost track of him. But, she mentions a girl-friend and Satō and Murakami go to the night-club where she, Harumi Namaki (Keiko Awaji), dances. 

She wants nothing to do with the coppers, and she's evasive in her answers, even when Satō presses her with what he knows about them. The thief comes to see her dance every day—there has to be something between them. Satō isn't afraid to call her a liar and presses the question. The girl breaks down in hysterics. It's hot, everyone's tired, and the two decide to interview her again the next day, away from her work. 

Mifune does a distinctive John-Ford-Western stance before the clouds break.

But, the gun has been used again—this time in a house robbery resulting in murder. For Murakami, time is now of the essence and he'll do anything to get the gun back. There are only a few bullets left, and any of them can take a life. How much worse will it get before he can find his gun and the man wielding it? His worst fears will be realized, but first, he and Satō have to interview the girlfriend again. They choose a different approach.

The two detectives decide to confront Harumi at her mother's house. The mother already thinks Harumi is a spoiled child and turns on the guilts to try to get her daughter to spill what she knows to the detectives. Once the mother knows who they're looking for, she lets them know that Yusa has just left, leaving a box of matches. Satō, figuring that the mother will harangue the information out of her daughter eventually, takes the matches to follow up at the hotel they advertise, leaving Murakami with the two women. A thunderstorm starts to rumble outside ominously; the heat will break soon. Nature can only take so much pressure.

Under the accusations by her mother and Murakami, the girl starts to downplay the importance of the man, saying he's just a hanger-on at the club, love-sick, and that he's not important to her—except that he bought her a dress, one that she couldn't possibly afford herself. And why shouldn't she have something like that? It's a rotten world and she'll take all the gifts she can get out of it. "Yes, it's a rotten world," Murakami berates her. "But, it's worse to take it out on the world. If you feel that way about it, why don't you steal!" He notices that all she can do is look at the dress, reluctant to even touch it, so he goads her into putting it on. While, thunder cracks and the skies light up with lightning, she twirls in the dress in ecstasy ("It's wonderful...like a dream") until her mother can't take anymore and tears the dress off her. The girl, shamed, finally breaks down, while outside, the rains start to beat down. 

Personal responsibilities and consequences. Stray Dog is full of them. Murakami's protagonist puts himself through hell, counting (and sweating) bullets while the rest of the world blithely looks away or makes excuses. One would think he was too close to the situation, too emotionally invested, to be the lead investigator—and partnering him with Satō takes the edge off—but, his sense of guilt can only be dealt with if he can find the guilt party, and so he won't be dissuaded. If Mifune's performance doesn't persuade you of his troubled psyche, Kurosawa surrounds him with oppressive weather to put on the heat and scorch the earth to highlight the emotions. During the girl's breakdown it gets to be a shade too emblematic, but the release is effective, and one is grateful for the reprieve of the investigation's tension.

Kurosawa only liked it in retrospective, saying "all that technique and not one real thought in it." He'd been trying to make a movie in the style of the Maigret novels he loved as a child, with the gritty realism of film-noir and neo-realism emerging throughout world cinema, but could not reach his own high expectations. Still, if this is a failure, it's a damned good one, working on levels both obvious and subliminal. He changed his mind about the film, eventually, and I think it may have been a case of the director seeing all his own strings in play, and finding it all pretty obvious. It is the first Japanese police drama, and so he was plowing virgin fields here. 

But it's a brilliant film, and for a police procedural, it's pretty much the user's manual.

The "stray dog" is run to ground, captured, and lets out an animal howl. 

There are a lot of interesting things in this scene—the monster-like stances, the brief cut-away to an indifferent outside-world, the contrast of the brutal chase in the bucolic world.

Kurosawa's confrontation scene has influenced many a hard-boiled author and artist.