Dodes'ka-Den

Dodes'ka-Den is a minor Akira Kurosawa film, only in the context that the story here is not as strong as, say, Rashomon or Seven Samurai. Despite the narrative shortcomings, the film is significant in Kurosawa's oeuvre for several reasons.

On a technical note, this is Kurosawa's first foray into color filmmaking. As such, the color palette here is stunning. Vibrant reds and blues often pop from the screen while yellows and greens provide accents. This is Kurosawa painting with film for the first time, so the colors are exaggerated — no slum has this kind of paint job — but Kurosawa clearly loves this first real chance to make a color film. He even gets a shot of a rainbow in before the half-hour mark. You had to see that coming.

Also, Dodes'ka Den is Kurosawa's first film without Toshiro Mifune in more than 20 years. The great Japanese actor played lead roles in most Kurosawa films, starting with Drunken Angel and ending with Red Beard just prior to Dodes'ka-Den.

So what's with the title?

Pronounced "Doh-DES-ka-Den," the title refers to an onomatopoeia in Japanese referring to the sound a train makes. One of the characters, a mildly mentally disabled boy, fantasizes about driving a trolley. With every shot of him, we hear him chanting, "Dodes'ka-den, dodes'ka-den," and so on. Kurosawa makes an interesting choice by providing Foley sound for when the boy is miming the actions of a driver. We hear clicks and horns and so on, even if we see nothing. This puts us right in the mind of the boy (and provides a tempting bit of film to use as an example in the audio production class I teach — I love Foley sound).

Unfortunately, this film was a critical and commercial failure. That coming on the heels of Kurosawa's dismissal from the U.S.-Japan production of Tora! Tora! Tora! only contributed to Kurosawa's spiraling depression at the time, and between 1965 and 1975, Kurosawa only completed three films. The great Japanese director attempted suicide in 1971, not long after the failure of Dodes'ka-Den.

Thing is, this isn't a bad film (though probably the closest Kurosawa got to making a bad film in color). This is just a distinct departure for him. After excelling with films set in feudal and modern-day Japan, Kurosawa set this film literally in a Tokyo trash heap, focusing on the varied characters who live there and their lives, dreams, desires, and troubles. Kurosawa does bring in some "swordplay" — one of the characters emerges from his house and bangs his weapon against a building, swinging wildly everywhere. Perhaps this is Kurosawa making some sort of statement about his previous pictures, but that statement is muddled here.

Dodes'ka-Den transcends the critical and commercial failure by reminding us that no matter our situation, there are people in worse places in life who get up every day and go on with things. That Kurosawa attempted suicide after this film is a bit ironic, and given the timing of his attempt, I can't help but draw parallels between the director and the character of the suicidal old man in Dodes'ka-Den, who drinks poison to kill himself and immediately changes his mind. Then he learns that he only consumed a "digestive."

In a way, Dodes'ka-Den reminds me of some of the independent films of the 1990s, in that there is no real plot, just a series of character vignettes all set in the same area, sometimes connecting to each other and sometimes not. You have all these quirky characters and you get this fly-on-the-wall look at their lives, but nothing much happens. We watch the characters via little slices of life living in a slum, where people dream and beg and never go anywhere. I wonder how much this style of filmmaking influenced all those independent films of the 1990s that eschewed narrative in favor of expressionism, postmodernism, or some other "-ism."

Even Kurosawa's minor films seem to have influenced a generation of filmmakers. Witness the brief but deliberate tracking shot of the plastic bag blowing in the wind at 29:18 — perhaps a precursor to Sam Mendes capturing the same in American Beauty. That Kurosawa sets his character-driven film in a slum and Mendes does the same in suburbia is not lost on me. Recall that American Beauty didn't have much of a plot, either — just intertwined characters spinning out of control and dragging each other down as they went.

To me, Dodes'ka-Den is a brave film. Kurosawa had everything and nothing to prove as a filmmaker, having made some of the greatest films in the history of Japanese cinema but also having been dismissed from Tora! Tora! Tora! in one of the biggest "What have you done for me lately?" moves in cinema history.

I sit and watch pretty much every Kurosawa film after 1965 and I wonder about his motivation. With nothing left to prove, why even bother? Why take such a dramatic left turn into the slums on the outskirts of Tokyo and make this bizarre little (140 minute) film? Why?

To create, of course.

That's the sort of conclusion that should motivate all artists. Art isn't about proof. Art is about creation, taking risks, succeeding and misfiring by turns (we hope more for the former than the latter), and learning from each experience how we can get better next time. For Kurosawa, there almost wasn't a next time, but he returned in 1975 with Dersu Uzala, which won an Academy Award. Such is the reward of perseverance.

Whether we get up every morning to make a film or to fantasize that we're driving a trolley, our imaginations can give us purpose, a reason to keep going, to keep trying and pushing and battling to create, to articulate our view of the world somehow, and let that be our legacy.

My dad has an interesting work ethic. "I just work. I go to bed tired every day. I don't understand anything else." The work we do is quite different, but I feel the same way. I wonder if Kurosawa did, too.