George Lucas freely admits taking inspiration from Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, a film about two meek, bickering peasants who meet a tough general and set out to help a princess. Sound familiar?
The last time I watched this film, in 2007 (I think), I had a flatscreen tube television. I remarked at the time how good the picture was, with just the right amount of grain and flecks of age that add rather than detract from the viewing. Now that I have a much bigger, flat panel HDTV, I'm pretty amazed at how good the DVD looks. I spend most of my time thinking about that when I watch this film.
Simply put, Criterion's 2001 DVD edition looks great. Sharp detail is evident throughout, but especially in scenes that take place in rocky areas (which comprise most of the film's locations). You can see textures in the rock, individual pebbles, clouds of dust, and fine grain in the film. I'm geeking out a bit at how amazing this DVD looks — a DVD, not a Blu-Ray, mind you.
From what I've read, The Hidden Fortress is Kurosawa's first widescreen film. Here's a good blog post on that, if you're interested. He's watched and written about each Kurosawa film in a bit more scholarly way than I'm doing here.
I'm fortunate to have the Criterion release with the 3.0 "Perspecta Sound" mix, which gives the soundtrack a bit more room to breathe. Other Criterion DVDs are plain old mono. If you're a purist who likes old films in mono, that might not bug you. (That track is an option on the 2001 disc, too.) I just prefer the breathing room.
My relationship with Kurosawa films seems to be on and off. I go in phases where I'll want to watch a bunch of his films in a week or two, and then I'm done for a while. I do that with all my favorite directors. Kurosawa is interrupting my Hitchcock phase right now, but I'll get back to Hitch soon enough.
As I watch Kurosawa's films and write about them, I get more interested in other Japanese filmmakers, but don't really know where to start. I've only seen one Yasujiro Ozu film (Tokyo Story), and virtually nothing else. Much of Japanese cinema is a blind spot for me. I need to fix that.
May I suggest Kenji Mizoguchi? Sansho the Bailiff and Ugetsu are both great choices.
ReplyDeleteWhile its animated I can fully recommend the movie Paprika. Its one of those movies that I think they only did it as an animation so they could do some of the weirder dream sequences. It is really a brilliant piece of Japanese cinema.
ReplyDeleteTristan