A relatively subdued Kurosawa masterpiece

Criterion has produced a great DVD of "Akahige" (Red Beard), a masterpiece directed by Akira Kurosawa that would be more acclaimed if it were not one among so many Kurosawa masterpieces. Although set in Tokugawa shogunate times and featuring two members of the samurai (warrior) class, "Akahige" is more like some of Kurosawa's contemporary (post-World War II) films than it is like the action-packed samurai masterpieces "Seven Samurai," "Yojimbo," and "Sanjuro." The young doctor trained in western surgical techniques (in Nagasaki, where Europeans were quarantined by the shogunate), Noboru Yasumoto (Yuzo Kayama), wears his sword well over an hour into the movie, and there is a spectacularly choreographed fight scene nearly two hours in, but the focus is on the growth of compassion and focusing of a vocation of helping the needy that Yasumoto develops under the tutelage of Dr. Kyojio Niide (Toshiro Mifune in his sixteenth and final appearance in a Kurosawa film) at the Koishikawa Public Clinic.

Dr. Yasumoto is initially petulant about being sent to intern at a public clinic when he expected a lucrative practice in the shogunate court. Although patience is not a hallmark of Mifune's fierce screen persona, as Red Beard, he took over much of the kind of guru role that Takashi Shimura played (with Mifune as the young hothead being civilized by Shimura, especially the physician Shimura played in "The Drunken Angel" and as the resourceful and sagacious leader of "The Seven Samurai"). Mifune was by no means declawed here. As Red Beard, he glowers often, intimidates both officials and young doctors, and dispatches a gang of ruffians who try to prevent his taking a sick and abused young woman to the clinic from the local brothel.

Red Beard rarely lectures or even exhorts. He gets Yasumoto involved in a surgical operation (Yasumoto faints) and gets Yasumoto interested in two dying elderly male patients, one who has ceased speaking (whose story is eventually told by his daughter) and one who is remarkably long-winded for someone on his deathbed (and whose path to sainthood is laid out in flashbacks within flashbacks). First, however, there is the Mantis, a mysterious woman of a rich family who is kept locked up, and whom Yasumoto arrogantly thinks he can cure. In a very long continuous take (with the camera moving in and up and down), the Mantis entraps and nearly kills the young doctor. This peels off a lot of Yasumoto's arrogance, and he matures over the course of the movie, which is supposed to be six months. (It was shot out of sequence, taking two years to shoot, and Yuzo Kayama was amazed at the performance Kurosawa had elicited from him when he first saw the finished movie.)

Self-sacrifice for the good of others is a recurrent theme in Kurosawa's film up to and including "Akahige," and I have already mentioned the heroic physician from "Drunken Angel." Increase of skill and growth of character is central to the preceding film, "Sanjuro," in which Kayama also played an impetuous youngster honed by the unconventional means employed by Mifune in full warrior mode. Both "Sanjuro" and "Akahige" were based on writings of Shugoro Yamamoto (though Kurosawa injected a whole lot of Dostoevsky's The Insulted and the Injured into the second half of the "Akahige" screenplay), as was Kurosawa's next (and to me, worst) film, "Dodesukaden" (1970) which was missing more than Mifune...

"Akahige" was Kurosawa's last black-and-white film, and his last widescreen (2.35:1 aspect ratio) one. Kurosawa enjoyed using both ends of the screen so that it is absolutely essential to see "Akahige" in letterbox format that Criterion used in an impeccable transfer (they also did a great job of immaculate sound transfer).

The full-length (184 minute) commentary track by Stephen Prince explains the technical aspects of Kurosawa's tracking, panning, and flattening perspective using telephoto lenses and cameras set at 90-degree angles to each other (Prince also goes into considerable detail about the diffusion of western medical ideas and practices into Japan and the medical ideas and practices of feudal Japan. Although delivered in something of a monotone, there is so much information presented so clearly that the commentary track would probably be of interest even to someone who does not like the movie but is interested in technical aspects of film-making.

I think that some shots are held a bit too long and that the exposition of the stories of the patients is a bit too detailed, but the performances are superb. The most crucial one is that delivered by Yuzo Kayama, who was a major Japanese heart-throb during the early-1960s. Toshiro Mifune's mixture of usual Mifune fierceness and Takashi Shimura-like compassionateness is impressive. The supporting roles are also superbly portrayed (Takashi Shimura—who appeared in even more Kurosawa movies than Mifune: 21—has a cameo, Yoshio Tsuchiya is affecting as the kind-hearted less-brilliant Dr. Mori, Michiko Araki is an especially vicious villain as the brothel-keeper who would not be out of place in a Mizoguchi film, and Chishu Ryu is plucked from the world of Ozu to play yet another father). And there is a major sympathetic female part, Terumi Niki as Otoyo, who grows from a terrified victim into a wise and compassionate woman protecting a young thief, Chobo (Yoshitaka Zushi) and presiding over his growth the way Dr. Yasumoto has hers.

I'll grant that "Akahige" is long (184 minutes including an intermission) and need not have been quite so long, but having just watched Tsai Ming-Liang's "What Time Is It There?", even the overly protracted scenes in "Akahige" seem to speed by. My appreciation of Kurosawa's genius was enhanced by watching "Akahige" again with Stephen Prince's commentary that interested me in scenes that had not interested me very much on first viewing. It seemed worth 6+ hours to me, and my attention span is regretably short (alas, considerably shorter than it used to be).

Kurosawa's technical mastery is very interesting, but I want to stress that the storylines are touching without being sentimental (well, maybe a little in the case of Chobo, but Kurosawa cuts incipient sentimentality there with absurdist humor as the kitchen staff contributes its own folk remedy).

Aftermath

Although "Akahige" was Kurosawa's biggest box-office success in Japan, post-Mifune (and post-Kayama?), Kurosawa had difficulty getting backing for his movies (his great 1980 anti-epics "Kagemusha" was underwritten by George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, "Dersu Uzala" by the Soviet government; their international success made filming "Ran" possible). Mifune made some great films without Kurosawa (especially "Chushingura" and the samurai trilogy with Hiroshi Inagaki and "Samurai Rebellion" directed by Masaki Kobayashi) and Kurosawa eventually made his last masterpieces without Mifune, but it is difficult not to regret the end of their collaboration (which was 99+% Kurosawa's fault). However, their legacy is huge and Criterion is to be applauded for delivering the transitional masterpiece "Akahige" to DVD so superlatively well.