A Japanese Homer Nods

Akira Kurosawa is the Homer of the current cinema, and like Homer he some times nods. Yet in two pictures now showing in the U.S., the great Japanese director (Rashomon, Ikiru, Yojimbo) demonstrates that the energy of genius can make a miss almost as exciting as a hit.

The Idiot, a Japanization of the Dostoevsky novel, is Kurosawa's favorite Kurosawa picture. Made in 1951, the film ran on for 165 minutes. Appalled, Kurosawa's crassly commercial distributor (Shochiku) hacked it down to 90 minutes. The uncut original has never been shown in public--until now. Thanks to a culture-conscious exhibitor named Dan Talbot, the unmitigated Idiot has had its world premiere in Manhattan--and the showing showed that the crassly commercial distributor was absolutely right.

The trouble seems to be that Kurosawa got fascinated with Dostoevsky's genius and forgot about his own. He follows with nearsighted assiduity every thread of the novelist's intricately woven tale. What's more, he too often tells the story in the author's words; he forgets to translate the words into correlatively compelling images. Nevertheless, the film skillfully counterfeits the look of Russia in the last century--it was shot in a small town in northern Japan in the dead of winter--and it brilliantly intuits the mystical spirit of Russian Christianity. The demonic nature of that spirit is portrayed by Toshiro Mifune; the angelic aspect by Masayuki Mori, who marvelously distinguishes in his expression what is specifically Christian from what is peculiarly Oriental in religious feeling: the light in the eyes of a saint from the light in the eyes of a sage.

Sanjuro, a sequel to Yojimbo, was made to make money, and it did. But in titillating the mass audience, Kurosawa evidently bored himself. In Yojimbo, he had an urgent idea: man is a beast and the world is better off without him. In Sanjuro, he confesses, "I had very little to say." He says it with impressive skill. Moviegoers who missed Yojimbo will assuredly find Sanjuro a bloody good show.

As in Yojimbo, the hero (Toshiro Mifune) is a Japanese congener of Shane: a 19th century soldier of misfortune who wears a scummy kimono but keeps his honor bright. Sure enough, he is known as "the fastest sword alive." As in Yojimbo, he drifts into a village torn by civil war. But in Yojimbo, an angry allegory of contemporary civilization, both parties to the dispute were vicious villains. In Sanjuro, there are the good guys and there are the bad guys. The hero joins the good guys and leads them to victory. In the process. Mifune demonstrates anew that he sure does swing a mean katana. In one scene he slaughters 27 men in 30 seconds. And at the fade he shows off his most celebrated attack, the deadly sakanuki or "reverse draw." He stands eye to eye with his opponent, a famous swordsman. With blinding speed the other fellow draws his sword. Upstroke. Downstroke. But Mifune has fooled him. By drawing with his left hand he has eliminated the downstroke. The same movement that extracts his sword from its scabbard drives it into his opponent's heart. Elapsed time: 0.5 sec. Neat? Yes. But also gaudy. Obviously, Mifune's sword doesn't actually penetrate his opponent's heart. It trips a valve concealed beneath his opponent's kimono and opens a tank containing a gallon of vegetable oil, iron oxide, water and chocolate sauce under 40 Ibs. of pressure. Spflluurrroooooooooosh!

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.