The Criterion Collection distributes classic foreign and independent films on home video, but the company is removing all of its movies from Netflix streaming by the end of 2011. Instant Cue suggests Criterion titles still available on Netflix by focusing on a different filmmaker each week.
When I started getting serious about film eight years ago, my father took me to DVD Planet in Huntington Beach, Calif. I looked through American classics, but he bought possibly every Japanese film he saw in the store. The titles included Rashomon (1950), Seven Samurai (1954) and Yojimbo (1961), which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. I also noticed that nearly all of these movies were released by the Criterion Collection. I would only later appreciate the great work that Criterion does to preserve and release classic foreign films. And it was not until I watched my father’s copy of Rashomon that I experienced the genius of director and writer Akira Kurosawa.
Because he is frequently mentioned as an influence by Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, Kurosawa is arguably the most famous Japanese filmmaker in the U.S. Spielberg called him the “pictorial Shakespeare of our time,” and the original Star Wars (1977) was conceived as a loose remake of Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress (1958). But having grown up in a Japanese family, I know his movies are not unanimously loved by everyone from the other end of the Pacific. My grandmother has never been fond of Kurosawa’s samurai epics, the Japanese equivalent of the American Western. Both genres are often seen as masculine, violent and sometimes simply dated.
However, Kurosawa’s best samurai films transcend these descriptors, and his skill as a filmmaker and understanding of the human condition are readily apparent in Ikiru (1952) and High and Low (1963), two films set in contemporary Japan. In fact, Roger Ebert and David Thomson, author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, consider Ikiru to be Kurosawa’s best film. Although usually referred to by its Japanese title, the movie is sometimes called Living. The name is seemingly ironic at first, considering it is essentially a movie about death, but by the end of his time, bureaucrat Kanji Watanabe learns to appreciate life more than nearly any character in the cinema.
The film handles an emotional story without resorting to cheap Hollywood sentimentality. Watanabe, played beautifully by Takashi Shimura, learns that he has stomach cancer and less than a year to live. In his last months, he tries to find meaning in his life. The film manages to approach its subject with distance, sometimes with a dry sense of humor. The first shot of the film is of an X-ray, and a narrator coldly explains, “This stomach belongs to the protagonist of our story. At this point, our protagonist has no idea he has this cancer.” By giving us this information in this manner, the movie subtly undermines narrative conventions. Instead of being given a chance to know the character before learning of his condition, we are bluntly presented with this information. Kurosawa is not simply telling a story the way an audience expects it to be told.
In fact, the narrator comes again later and bluntly delivers another blow. With 50 minutes left in the film, he states, “Five months later. The protagonist of our story has died.” The film cuts to a photograph of Watanabe, displayed at a traditional Japanese wake. For the rest of the film, drunken former co-workers try to unlock the mystery of the bureaucrat’s last few months. They cannot understand how a man who was once the walking dead could so suddenly become alive. As they recall their encounters with Watanabe, the transformation of the character is presented in flashbacks. This nonlinear narrative gives us a unique look at Watanabe and also demonstrates Kurosawa’s sense of humor. The bureaucrats are incredibly drunk and animated, and something that could have been pure sentiment becomes somehow playful. Kurosawa made tough samurai films throughout his career, but the fact that he could make a film about life and death with so much delicacy demonstrates his diversity as a director and writer. His greatest strength was not how he could stage a sword battle, but how he could use his films to communicate universal truths.
If Ikiru shows us the beauty of the modern world, Kurosawa’s crime thriller High and Low gives us a look at the darker side of human nature. Toshiro Mifune stars as Kingo Gondo, an executive who mortgages everything in a risky business move to become the most powerful stockholder of his company. But everything changes when a vicious kidnapper comes into the picture. Even though the criminal captures the wrong child, the best friend of Gondo’s son, he still demands the $30 million ransom. Mifune was the John Wayne of Japan, starring in many classic samurai films, but he had much more range than Wayne. Mifune’s voice has its trademark grit at High and Low’s most intense moments, but the actor reveals a different side as a savvy businessman. The acting of Kurosawa’s samurai films is often theatrical, but his contemporary-set films demonstrate his skill in directing a variety of acting styles.
In its final acts, High and Low turns into Kurosawa’s most vicious social commentary. The investigation into the crime gives the audience a look into an urban space infested with hard drugs. It is an uncompromising vision that admittedly left me feeling a little sick the first time I saw the film. Kurosawa uses this film to talk about the implications of a post-industrial society and inequalities of wealth between different classes. Perhaps more than people seem to realize, Kurosawa had a social conscience that was evident in his contemporary films.
Samurai films such as Seven Samurai and Yojimbo still hold up as masterpieces today. They are complex examinations of character and class that rank among Kurosawa’s best. But the films set in contemporary Japan indicate that he was even more of a visionary. His stories were not limited to Japan’s past. He could apply his eye for human behavior and character to nearly any setting. I am still grateful for the fact that my father decided to go to DVD Planet that day and take me with him. If I had not had that memorable first encounter, my journey through Kurosawa’s electric filmography might not have been the same.
You can sign on to your Netflix account now to stream Rashomon, Ikiru, Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, High and Low or Kagemusha.