Kurosawa

Friday, February 1, 8pm
Rashomon
(Akira Kurosawa, 1950, Japan, 87 minutes, 35mm)
Two facts are indisputable: a woman has been raped and her husband killed. The circumstances are murky, and each eyewitness account conflicts with the rest. Kurosawa’s film, which “struck the world of film like a thunderbolt,” as Roger Ebert has written, is acclaimed not just for its sophisticated narrative and visual style, but for its sober meditation on subjectivity. The title, Rashomon, has become cultural shorthand for a situation in which no one knows what really happened, and for the individual bias at the bottom of every “truth.”

Friday, February 22, 8pm
Ikiru
(Akira Kurosawa, 1952, Japan, 143 minutes, 35mm)
A domestic drama, Ikiru is a departure from the epic period pieces Kurosawa was making at the time. While his samurai films ask, “Who will die next?” Ikiru asks, “How will a dying man validate his life?” Takashi Shimura gives a tour de force performance as Kanji Watanabe, a government worker dying of cancer. Shimura’s restrained, subtle portrayal and Kurosawa’s delicate touch make Ikiru a moving story about a man’s search for his own relevance.

Friday, February 29, 8pm
The Seven Samurai     
(Akira Kurosawa, 1954, Japan, 200 minutes, 35mm)
Many of our common notions about samurais can be traced to this landmark film, the epic’s epic, which borrows from Shane and other American westerns and was remade by John Sturges as The Magnificent Seven. Hired to protect a poor village from a gang of bandits, Kurosawa’s samurais — at once mythic and human — battle for their honor. A heroic tale of tradition and sacrifice, The Seven Samurai is an exhilarating experience, a feast of striking visuals, expert pacing, and haunting battle sequences.

Friday, March 7, 7pm
Throne of Blood
(Akira Kurosawa, 1957, Japan, 110 minutes, 35mm)
A black and white adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth set in feudal, medieval Japan, Throne of Blood has more ambition, avarice, and prophetic mysticism than a political convention. Toshiro Mifune is Washizu, a man corrupted by his wife’s ruthless pursuit of power and spurred by the enigmatic predictions of an old woman. Kurosawa translates the Bard’s verse into powerfully moving images — the plot is followed very, very loosely — and Asaichi Nakai’s stunning photography is pure poetry. The result, surprisingly, is “the most successful film version of Macbeth,” according to Shakespeare authority Harold Bloom.

Friday, March 7, 9pm
Yojimbo
(Akira Kurosawa, 1961, Japan, 110 minutes, 35mm)
Toshiro Mifune plays Sanjuro, “the bodyguard who kills the bodies he’s hired to guard,” as Pauline Kael described him. Kurosawa’s attempt to confound critics who had reductively called his films westerns, Yojimbo is also his funniest and perhaps his most influential film. Stumbling into a civil war, Mifune rents out his samurai skills to both sides. When this toothpick-chewing samurai-for-hire plays the groups off each other, blood covers everything. Yojimbo masterfully melds the western and gangster genres into a samurai movie that in turn became the inspiration for Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars.

Friday, March 14, 8pm
Red Beard
(Akira Kurosawa, 1965, Japan, 199 minutes, 35mm)
A transition in Kurosawa’s career, Red Beard was his last black and white, ‘Scope film and his final collaboration with actor Toshiro Mifune. Yasumoto, an arrogant, sheltered medical student, chafes under the direction of the dedicated but brusque Dr. Niide (Mifune). Practicing medicine in a poor rural welfare clinic, Yasumoto witnesses life’s brutality for the first time. Chastened by his own impotence, Yasumoto must learn humility from Niide: “We can only fight poverty and ignorance, and cover up what we don’t know.”