Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema

Rating:
Summary: Experience Kurosawa to the outer depths...
Review: Goodwin brings the tools of literary criticism to study the films of Akira Kurosawa. He does this by bringing to light many of the cinematographic, historic, and narrative influences of Kurosawa's work.

Such as when introducing color to his films, Henri Langlois (head of the Cinémathèque Française) showed Kurosawa how color can be used to communicate a distinctive meaning.

Or how, in "Ran" (1985), Kurosawa was influenced by the legend of "Motonari Mori (1497-1571)," and by inverting the story, "whose three sons are admired in Japan as the ideal family for loyalty." After writing the first few drafts of the script, Kurosawa noticed a resemblance to Shakespeare's "King Lear". What surprises me about this, is that I believed that the script was primarily influenced by "King Lear", but that's not true. The play is influenced by "King Lear", but was crafted separately under the influence of the inversion of the Motonari Mori legend and its major influence being the mind of Kurosawa himself. The film then becomes an inversion of the ideal, a twisting of the archetype.

Goodwin tore down the myth that Kurosawa was an isolated artist, and introduced me to a man who immersed himself in the literature, drama, and cinema of the whole human experience.

I strongly recommend his book, it opened my eyes; it may open yours.

Rating:
Summary: Experience Kurosawa to the outer depths...
Review: Goodwin brings the tools of literary criticism to study the films of Akira Kurosawa. He does this by bringing to light many of the cinematographic, historic, and narrative influences of Kurosawa's work.

Such as when introducing color to his films, Henri Langlois (head of the Cinémathèque Française) showed Kurosawa how color can be used to communicate a distinctive meaning.

Or how, in "Ran" (1985), Kurosawa was influenced by the legend of "Motonari Mori (1497-1571)," and by inverting the story, "whose three sons are admired in Japan as the ideal family for loyalty." After writing the first few drafts of the script, Kurosawa noticed a resemblance to Shakespeare's "King Lear". What surprises me about this, is that I believed that the script was primarily influenced by "King Lear", but that's not true. The play is influenced by "King Lear", but was crafted separately under the influence of the inversion of the Motonari Mori legend and its major influence being the mind of Kurosawa himself. The film then becomes an inversion of the ideal, a twisting of the archetype.

Goodwin tore down the myth that Kurosawa was an isolated artist, and introduced me to a man who immersed himself in the literature, drama, and cinema of the whole human experience.

I strongly recommend his book, it opened my eyes; it may open yours.