Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #124137 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-07-01
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Import, NTSC
• Running time: 110 minutes

Album Description
Asian NTSC/All Code DVD. 1946 film directed by Akira Kurosawa. Black & White. 110 minutes. English subtitles.

Customer Reviews

Only for the Kurosawa Completist
A slow-paced movie, and it will try your patience. Some sequences are very hard to follow with very little set-up and quick transitions. Other sequences hold a boring visual for far too long. It is just not the masterpiece you come to expect with this director. A bigger problem is the story itself; it doesn't make you entirely sympathetic or interested in any of the major characters. The movie is almost entirely dialogue, and the point of most of these dialogues is a disturbing lack of empathy between those involved. There may be a cultural barrier to the way the characters are so reticent to explain their feelings, motivations to either the other characters, or the camera. Still, I've noticed this in other Japanese movies, but never felt so blocked from any understanding of why these people act, or most likely in this movie, fail to act. An example; the lack of eye contact made between characters; at some point that is too foreign for most Western viewers. There is also a creepy Maoist-poster theme to this movie: college professor daughter reformed by peasant labor. And maybe it was my (poor?) copy, but there was an odd stroboscopic effect with ghosted images in scenes. An intentional effect? Don't know. But its of a piece with some of the failed risk-taking in this flick.