Kurosawa and Dostoevsky

Interesting essay by Peggy Chiao on Kurosawa's early influences,

The themes, symbolism, and aesthetic forms of Akira Kurosawa’s films owe their origins to the ideas and sensibilities that captured his imagination as a young man. They include Marxism, which caught the attention of the Japanese intelligentsia in the twenties and thirties; classical Russian novels, which mesmerized the country’s cultural elite; impressionist painting, which rocked the contemporary art world; and the sport of kendo, which Kurosawa practiced as a young boy.

Another major influence on Kurosawa was his elder brother, Heigo, who was addicted to the novels of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Maksim Gorky. Additionally, he introduced Akira to Western art and the auteur cinema of Fritz Lang, John Ford, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Sergei Eisenstein. Heigo, however, was to commit suicide when Akira was twenty-three years old. In his memoir Something Like an Autobiography, Kurosawa wrote about his brother’s profound influence on his development in art and literature, and especially in nurturing his passion for Dostoyevsky. Their only difference, he wrote, was that “my brother was pessimistic and negative, and I was optimistic and positive.” One time, Kurosawa met an actor who knew his brother, and the actor told him, “You are exactly like your brother, only he’s the negative, and you’re the positive print.”

From Dostoyevsky, Kurosawa inherited the concept of redemption. As had Dostoyevsky’s czarist Russia, Kurosawa’s Japan was going through momentous economic changes and had to brace itself against an impending catastrophe. The tortures of historical change produced in the artist a humanitarian ideal, to seek redemption through acts of self-sacrifice. In Seven Samurai, the samurai display great perseverance in protecting the farmers, their social inferiors. In the closing sequence, as the farmers joyously plant rice seedlings and sing, the surviving samurai stand by their comrades’ grave, on a mound, and sigh, “The victory belongs to those peasants, not to us.”

Comments

Ward No. 6

Ward No. 6 is a short story written by Chekhov in 1892. It has appeared in various collections of Chekhov short stories, including The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories translated by Constance Garnett in 1921. In this story, Chekhov explores the inner working of a run-down lunatic asylum in a provincial town. He introduces the readers to a coarse porter who speaks mostly with his fists, various patients, a doctor who presides over this ward, and expresses his thoughts with a local postmaster. It was recently made into a movie , featuring Vladimir Ilyin. Here's a clip . There's also this very recent short film (30 min.) by Suzana Purkovic, with English subtitles.

Light and Dark

I'm still trying to sort out the ending. The story had to end tragically but was surprised that Rogozhin actually sought forgiveness in Myshkin after what he had done to Nastya, although I think that Dostoevsky intended the two to be read as one, along similar lines as The Double . He kept Rogozhin a shadowy figure throughout the novel, ever lurking in the dark of the Prince's soul. Try as he might, Prince Myshkin could not alter events and thus the fantasy world he had lived in upon returning to Russia crumbled before his eyes, leaving him at a total loss as how to reconcile himself with it. Once again, Dostoevsky plumbs great depths of the human soul. This is a psychological drama told in theatrical terms, perfectly suited for the stage. Characters appear and disappear as if moving from the shadows of the stage. I can see the "green bench" as the central stage piece. In the final part, one gets the sense that Lebedev is orchestrating events, and may even

The Morning of Our Motherland

I was watching a History channel special on Socialist Realism art of the Soviet Union and this was one of the grand canvases that is now stuffed away in the Tretyakov State Gallery . The painter was Fyodor Shurpin and he had a wonderful eye for detail, right down to the secret service black car on the road to Stalin's right. To the left, one sees a row of combines turning over the field of golden wheat, which became symbolic of Stalin's Soviet Union. Утро нашей Родины is from 1949, with Stalin radiating a post-war confidence. It is also known as Dawn of our Fatherland and other titles. Shurpin was one of the better artists to carry over from the pre-war years. The narrator pointed out how socialist realist art changed dramatically as a result of the war, becoming much more static and propagandist in appearance. He pointed to two stops along the Moscow subway as an example of this divide. Here, Shurpin essentially transposes Stalin for an earlier "Mother"

Chekhov's Gun

Search This Blog