akahige (redbeard) (w&d kurosawa w. masato ide, hideo oguni, ryûzô kikushima)

One of the joys of cinema is the gradual process of discovering a filmmaker’s works. I saw Ran twice when it came out, the second time with Sedley, as we had promised him we’d watch it with him, so we never told him we’d already seen it, unable to resist, in that fine old cinema on St Martin’s Lane which was later turned into a gym. Watching Ran for me (not so much for my companion for obvious reasons) was a leap into an unknown world. The overarching vision of the filmmaker, pinning Shakespeare’s art to a culture which still seemed wildly remote, Martian. 

Since then I have signally failed to engage with Japanese cinema. A brief flirtation with Teshigahara, but no Ozu and little Kurosawa. Cinemateca might allow me to put that right. Perhaps for this reason, even though some critics suggest it is a minor work, Redbeard struck me as an astonishing piece of filmmaking. A director working on both a cinematic and philosophical scale which few can have matched. 

Cinematically, the use of light is a constant wonder. People who know always talk a lot about the use of light in cinema. I’m part-phiilstine, so rarely feel the impact. But in Redbeard, the chiaroscuro is frequently breathtaking. Eyes are perfectly framed in a tiny pool of light, surrounded by shade. The play of light and darkness speaks to the moral world the film explores. At times you feel like it would be possible to switch off the sound and subtitles and bathe in the film’s texture.

Philosophically, the complexity of Kurosawa’s vision is in stark contrast to the simplified moral world so much Anglo-Saxon cinema occupies. The film is in some ways a meditation on education; how rigid social codes close down the capacity of those who feel themselves outside those codes to develop a moral education. A thief becomes the most sympathetic character in the whole film; an angry girl is taught how to love by being shown love, rather than discipline. Through all this, the arrogant young doctor himself, Yasumoto, is educated through being exposed to the realities of the world beyond his immediate social circle. Kurosawa uses the broad stage of the charity hospital as a model of social existence. In the face of death or disease, we are all equal. This uber-democratic motto gives a philosophical force to the director’s humanist message, which resonates above and beyond the geographical context of his film.