Kurosawa Akira

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Kurosawa Akira

• Heroes and Heroism

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Kurosawas Films

• Kurosawa Akira (1910-1998)
• SIGNIFICANT BIOGRAPHICAL FACTS
• (early life)
• His dream to be an artist he went to art school
  after his secondary education.
• Avid reader of classic literature Dostoevsky,
  Tolstoy, Gorky, Shakespeare, Akutagawa (favourite
  authors)

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Kurosawas Films

• Entered PCL in 1936 at the age of 26 as an
  assistant director. He mainly worked for
  Yamamoto Kajiro.
• SIGNIFICANT FACTS
• Wrote many scripts before he became a director
  Kurosawa wrote scripts for all his films.
  Strong, clear narrative line and sharp
  characterization.

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Kurosawas Auteuristic Motifs and Themes

• Creation of HEROES and ANTI-HEROES
• Male characters who are stubborn, courageous,
  resilient, though often reckless or not
  faultless.
• They face moral choices or dilemmas
• Though they live in a world of moral chaos or in
  the void of ethical or behavioural standards,
  they choose to act for the public good.

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Kurosawas Auteuristic Motifs and Themes

• Kurosawas heroes - willing to do greater and
  nobler things - sacrifice themselves for this
  purpose.
• Kurosawas anti-heroes try to be honest to their
  individual demands - existentialist demands which
  are at the same time public demands.
• An imperfect young man becomes a hero by
  encountering an older tutorand growing up the
  wretched becomes a hero though his potential
  revealed by coincidental circumstances.

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Kurosawas Auteuristic Motifs and Themes

• Creation of larger-than-life but memorable
  characters
• Clear delineation of characters ands sharp
  characterization of individual movie characters

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Hero and Heroism

• SUGATA Sanshiro is at first a brash,
  self-confident student of martial arts. However,
  he gradually masters the true spirit of Judo and
  attains enlightenment under a influential
  teacher harming the opponent and winning a match
  is not the ultimate aim of Judo. Its true
  purpose lies in gaining total self-control and
  bettering oneself.

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Hero and Heroism

• An alcoholic doctor working for the poor,
  disfranchised and foreigners, Sanada, treats the
  gun wound a Yakuza of the Tokyo post-war black
  market, Matsunaga, received without reporting
  the police. Sanada selflessly tried to save
  Matsunaga who more seriously suffers from
  tuberculosis.

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Hero and Heroism

• A young police officer, Murakami, got his pistol
  stolen and it is used for robbery and murder.
  With the assistance of a senior and wiser police
  officer, Sato, he desperately tries to capture
  the murder.

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Hero and Heroism

• The minor civil servant WATANABE Kanji in Ikiru
  (1952) who discovers that he is terminally ill
  with cancer and starts desperately searching
  meaning for life his short remaining life. The
  most unlikely person proves to be a great little
  hero.

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Hero and Heroism

• Heroic warriors in Seven Samurai - Kanbei,
  Katsushiro, Gorobei, Shichijiro, Kyuzo,
  Heihachi, and Kikuchiyo
• Characterization based on the sharp observation
  of human types and differentiation in characters

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Hero and Heroism

• SHIMADA Kanbei
• Though a great samurai and cool strategist, he is
  not fortunate in battles as fighting always on
  the losing side. Now, though he is a ronin, he
  has every quality to be a great leader and fights
  against 70 bandits with his six men.

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Hero and Heroism

• KATAYAMA Gorobei
• Experienced, self-controlled master samurai, who
  is a great strategist supporting Kanbei as his
  right-hand man, though he does not look like it.

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Hero and Heroism

• Shichiroji
• He worked for Kanbei before he lost tenure.
  Extremely loyal to Kanbei and knows perfectly
  what his former master wants and how he behaves.
  A model feudal man of honour and duty.

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Hero and Heroism

• HAYASHIDA Heihachi
• Not a great swordsman but has a great sense of
  humour and unexpected sensitivity cheering other
  samurais and villagers.

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Hero and Heroism

• Kyuzo
• Extremely self-disciplined and ascetic master
  swordsman on move. He believes he can trust in
  nobody but himself. He shows no emotion but is
  not nihilist.

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Hero and Heroism

• OKAMOTO Katsushiro
• Young, novice samurai, who adores Kanbei. He is
  naïve and innocent at start but grows up under
  the tutelage of Kanbei through his touch battle
  experiences.

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Hero and Heroism

• Kikuchiyo
• A son of peasants and war orphan. Utterly
  unconventional and extremely emotional person,
  pretending he is a samurai. Fierce and reckless
  fighter in battles though he has no skills as a
  swordsman

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Hero and Heroism

• Seven samurai is about the relationship between
  the samurai and the villagers. And I wanted to
  show each samurai as an individual. Kurosawa Akir

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Hero and Heroism

• Throne of Blood retells Shakespeares Macbeth.
• WASHIZU Takatoki (Mifune Toshiro) murders his
  master following partly the prophesies given by a
  medium and his wifes cajolement.
• Tragic Shakespearean hero

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Hero and Heroism

• The masterless samurai, KUWABATAKE Sanjuro who by
  chance walks into a town dominated by two rival
  groups of gangsters and two influential merchants
  who rely on their protection. Sanjoro devices to
  destroy both parties. Yojinbo A great medieval
  anti-hero.

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Hero and Heroism

• A group of idealistic young men, determined to
  clean up the corruption in their town, are aided
  by a scruffy, cynical samurai (TSUBAKI
  Sanjuro)who does not at all fit their concept of
  a noble worrior. Sanjuro - a great medieval
  anti-hero.

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Hero and Heroism

• In Red Beard (1965) the doctor named NIIDE looks
  after the poor and wretched who can barely pays
  medical bills and the young doctor YASUMOTO who
  learns under his tutelage that he can do more
  good for working in his clinic than becoming a
  court doctor.

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Hero and Heroism

• High and Low (1963) - The wealthy company
  executive, GONDO, mortgages everything he has to
  buy out his company. The son of his chauffeur is
  kidnapped being mistaken for his own child. He
  agrees to pay the ransom from the money that he
  has saved to take over the company.

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Hero and Heroism

• A Russian tribesman is an unlikely hero who
  guides a team of a Russian topographical
  expedition in a Siberian journey in the extreme
  climate. Derus Uzala

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Humanism and Humanitarianism

• Trust in human goodness and decency
• Trust in human rationality and wisdom
• Humanism - all human beings are rational and can
  be enlightened. Thus, they have dignity and
  worth which are unique to themselves.
• Humanitarian concerns - the revelation of
  deprived and oppressive conditions and the
  demonstration of the wish to improve them.
• Humanitarian and humanistic ideals backbone of
  film characters heroism and heroic actions.

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Humanism and Humanitarianism

• He gives everything he has in his last days in
  order to get a mosquito-infected bog drained and
  make it into a public park the local
  communitys dream.
• Heroism of a small man and petit bureaucrat
• Humanism defeats bureaucracy

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Humanism and Humanitarianism

• In Seven Samurai the defense of the village
  against the bandits is an act of humanitarianism,
  humanism and heroism.
• Helping those who suffer.
• Again we have been defeated. The winners are
  those farmers, but not us. Kanbei Shimada

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Humanism and Humanitarianism

• Humanist theme is conveyed through the anti-hero,
  Kuwagatake Sanjuro.
• He agrees to be a bodyguard to one faction and
  then the other just because it amuses him. He
  soon decides that it is better if all die.
• Sanjuro helps out suffering townsfolk.

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Humanism and Humanitarianism

• Red Beard (1965)
• Helping others, particularly the deprived and
  poor, is the quintessential moral obligation of
  civil society.
• Compassion and conscientiousness play the
  prominent role in Kurosawas films from the late
  1940s and throughout the 1950 and 60s.

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Humanism and Humanitarianism

• I had something special in mind when I made
  this film I wanted to make something that my
  audience would want to see, something so
  magnificent so that they would just have to see
  it. Akira Kurosawa
• Magnificence in human compassion and
  conscientiousness.

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Growing-up and Entertainment

• SUBTHEME
• Relationships between younger and older men
• Relationships between the innocent and the
  experienced
• A younger man learns humanistic truths with the
  tutelage of an older man.
• SUGATA Sanshiro and YANO Shogoro in Sugata
  Sanshiro
• The young gangster, MATSUOKA and his alcoholic
  doctor, SANADA in Drunken Angel

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Growing-up and Entertainment

• The young detective, MURAKAMI and the senior
  detective, SATO in Stray Dog.
• WTANABE Kanbei, the experienced warrior and the
  young samurai, Katsushiro, who has yet to fight
  in a battlefield in Seven Samurai.
• The compassionate doctor, NIIDE and the young
  and ambitious doctor YASUMOTO in Red Beard.

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Kurosawa Akira - maker of mens filmsHeroic men
male relationship and comradeshipLittle space
for women few female characters who are as
impressive as male counterparts.