I might be so bold as to say that whether or not you know who Akira Kurosawa is determines whether or not you can call yourself a film buff.
Kurosawa was a Japanese director with 31 credits during the course of a 50-year career (according to IMDb). Even if you’re not familiar with his work, you are definitely familiar with the works he inspired. Heard of The Magnificent Seven? It’s a remake of Kurosawa’s 1954 Seven Samurai, a movie filled with laughs and tears and plenty of action.
How about the Clint Eastwood western A Fist Full of Dollars? A remake of Kurosawa’s 1961 Yojimbo starring Toshiro Mifune (pictured below) who appeared in many of Kurosawa’s films over the years.
Did you ever see a movie about bubbling servants helping an old general rescue a princess in the midst of a war of rebellion? Nope, not talking about Star Wars, but Kurosawa’s 1958 movie The Hidden Fortress.
It also went the other way. Kurosawa took the Shakespearian tragedies Macbeth and King Lear and turned them into the samurai epics Throne of Blood and Ran, the latter of which earned him an Academy Award nomination for best director in 1985.
It wasn’t all action either. Kurosawa didn’t shy away from heavier topics. Ikiru (1952) is about a retired office worker coming to grips with living in (and possibly soon leaving) a world that no longer has use for him.
Rashomon (1950) is nothing short of remarkable. I just rewatched it the other day. It had been about ten years since I first saw it and is what prompted this article in the first place. This is a 63-year-old Japanese film that tells the story of a woman raped in the woods by a bandit. It is told from four different points of view. Each story differs slightly and leaves it up to the audience to decide what happened, or accept that we can never really know the truth. It forces the viewer to deal with concepts of good and evil and honor in ways few films do. Movies that do flashbacks from multiple points of view are still called “Rashomon style.”
In 1990 Kurosawa was given an honorary Oscar “for cinematic accomplishments that have inspired, delighted, enriched and entertained worldwide audiences and influenced filmmakers throughout the world.”
Here’s a nice little tribute video for his 99th birthday (he died at age 88):