It is said that Akira Kurosawa is the "Emperor of Movies" in Japan. I personally think that this metaphor is very inappropriate. I am afraid that most people who give this name have only seen Akira Kurosawa's samurai films, sword and halberd films or war films, or have only seen Its grand scenes and long shots with strong colors have not paid attention to its rich humanistic perspective and deep human concern. Balzac of France has become a social encyclopedia of critical realism in the 19th century due to his "Human Comedy". Germany's Rainer Werner Fassbender was called the "German Balzac" because of his 41 films in his short life, his panorama criticism of society, and became the scalpel of post-war German society. , then Akira Kurosawa deserves the title of "Japan's Balzac", or simply "the social encyclopedia of post-war Japan". Why?
Because in Kurosawa's more than half a century of filming career, he has extended his brushstrokes and lenses to every corner of post-war Japanese society. Many costume films or films adapted from Shakespeare's plays can be classified into this category. Moreover, Akira Kurosawa describes the representatives of each social group and each class, which can go straight to the subtleties of human nature, almost all classics. Akira Kurosawa has photographed peasant groups ("Seven Samurai", 1954; "Sengoku Hero", 1958; "Dersu Uzala", 1975) and capitalist groups ("Heaven and Hell", 1963 ; "Sweet Dreams", 1960), filmed groups of doctors ("Red Beard", 1965), filmed groups of police officers ("Wild Dogs", 1949), filmed groups of civil servants ("Desire of Life", 1952), the ruling class (Ran, 1980), Shadow Dancer, 1980, The Spider's Nest, 1957), the samurai class (The Heart Stick, 1965; Tsubaki Juro ", 1962, "Rashomon", 1950), has photographed a group of artists ("Dream", 1990), and now this "Curved Sunset" (1993) is Kurosawa Akira's posthumous work in terms of time. Year) and Akira Kurosawa's early film "Toshi Sanshiro" (1943), a perfect closed loop for 50 years and a half century, extending the curtain call of life to the group of teachers again.
A professor who taught German at a university loved by his students, when he retired at the age of 60, moved his home to a remote place far away from the noise of the city. In the book, a hermit living in a grass hut lives and writes books to retire in his old age. The family banquet entertained the students who helped to move. Because of the difficulty of rationing during the war in Japan, he could only use horse meat to make up for the lack of venison to entertain the students. That horse is a war horse he knew when he was teaching in the military academy. From here, the film has shown me that the professor has no children and only his old wife), so the students are worried about the professor. What to do with the thief? The professor said that he had nothing to do with himself, and he disagreed. However, the male No. 2 duo in the film, the fat student and the thin student who opened a law firm, were still worried, so they simulated thieves to test the safety of the professor's home. The fat student also walked along with the professor's hat. Seeing this, the audience may mistake it for a comedy, because the setting of the fat and thin student duo is very similar to the Hollywood 1930s funny group "Laurey and Hardy". These two students know the embarrassment of the professor when he was young. , you can make jokes about the professor unscrupulously, in fact, it shows that the professor and the student are in harmony.
Then there was an air raid (presumably the U.S. bombed Hiroshima in 1945), and the professor's house was bombed and burned down, but fortunately the old couple survived. The professor rescued a few pieces of clothing and belongings, but it was the book "Duck Changming" by Ya Changming. The Abbot's Notes", the students helped him move again, this time it was really like Du Fu's Thatched Cottage, just an empty room, leaking wind and rain. It was the good baron who rented the gardener's house to them. This time, the fat and thin student duo led to one of the main lines of the film that ran through more than two hours. In fact, these two kind-hearted students mobilized the professors all over the world to raise funds for rebuilding the professor's new home. The beautiful quality of respecting teachers and respecting the Tao in the traditional Japanese society has begun to emerge here. After the war, corruption and social injustice in Japanese society were also manifested in the songs of professors and students in the carnival. Before the professor moved into his new home, whenever the shabby room was illuminated at the beginning of the month, he could still romantically imagine with his students, "I like old songs, just like Henri Rousseau's paintings." The intellectual class in Japanese society is like a beggar with no food or clothing. Akira Kurosawa uses four seasons of close-up here to show us the situation and state of mind of intellectuals. Although the film is very artistic, it still makes people think deeply. Here's a screenshot:
As shown in the picture, in autumn, the professor can still support his work; in winter, the broken windows and sheets cannot keep out the cold, and the professor and his wife are helpless to look at the sky; in spring, there is hope, and a new house for students to raise money is under construction; in summer, the professor finds out the best clothes to go to Moa Tuo's birthday party. In order to thank the students for their help, the professor drank nearly a liter of beer during the banquet, and the students were all laborers engaged in various industries in the society. Except for the fat and thin students of the two male duo in the film, they were lawyers and had a little more money. You can have money and spare time to work for the professor. Other students have different situations. Some have become monks (who can preside over the professor's funeral), and some clerks who commute on a green train (can memorize the names of all the stations along the way). , there are executioners who execute people (the professor teases him for not knowing what his responsibilities are); there are doctors, soldiers, workers, and teachers who inherit the mantle of professor... These laborers from all walks of life, and the retired professor who is embarrassed at night , The most important 60th birthday banquet in his life was held in a humble small bar. The middle was too loud (everyone sang songs satirizing current affairs), which attracted American soldiers.
The professor moved into a new home, and a group of four students, represented by the fat and thin duo, came to the professor's house to celebrate, but they encountered a triad that wanted to build a building next to the professor's house to block the light of the professor's house. The underworld. The student group of four, represented by the fat and thin duo, found the land owner privately, saying that while the professor was alive, they would not sell the land. They could pay for the right to use the land, and told the land owner not to tell the land owner. professor. The confrontation between professors, teachers, students, landowners and the underworld leads to the fourth male lead in the film, the cat that the professor will mobilize the whole city to find. This cat is quite human, and has a chivalrous style. When confronting the underworld, he takes the lead and rages. The professor gave him the German name "Noah" because he taught German. Kind of like the Noah in Noah's Ark in the Bible.
The actual professor did take the cat as a "Noah's Ark" for his own night scene. This cat ignited the hope of the professor who just moved into the new home for a new life. The most important thing is that the old couple has no children. The professor treats the cat as his own child. Cat Noah has a separate bedroom. But the good times didn't last long. One rainy night, the cat disappeared. Neighbors said he was lost, and the police said he had skinned the luthier... On the day the cat disappeared, the professor was on the train returning home from a lecture in a foreign place. He saw the cat farewell to him in a trance, and seemed to have telepathy. When he got home, every time it rained, the professor would have the hallucination of cats coming to see him. After the cat disappeared, the professor didn't think about eating and drinking, he didn't take a shower, and he washed his face with tears every day. The professor went to the school to hand out flyers. The professor bowed to the elementary school students and asked them to look for them. Then he mobilized the neighbors and the police to look for them. Then he taught the students who were engaged in the publishing industry. I wrote an article "A Little Biography of My Cat", and then readers from all over the country sent letters saying that they had seen the kitten named "Noah". In the end, the one sent by someone was not the real Noah, which made the professor so happy. Fortunately, another black and white cat appeared later, just like another "Noah", which made up for the professor's heartache. Akira Kurosawa took up nearly a third of the 2-hour-long film about the professor's search for cats. It was even more exaggerated to the point that a professor mobilized the whole city to find cats. This cannot be said to be Kurosawa Akira's willfulness. has its deep meaning.
On the surface, it was the professor who regarded the cat "Noah" as his son and daughter, as a place where poetic souls could live. The true meaning of light and shadow? Taking looking for cats as the dividing point, it can be roughly divided into three parts, which can be borrowed from Buddhist principles: seeing the heaven and earth, seeing all living beings, and seeing yourself. In the first third of the film, the warm communication with students is for "seeing all beings", and the cat-hunting trip in the middle is for "seeing yourself" and finding the meaning of life, the ultimate secret of the film, Kurosawa Akira At the master level, you must be thinking about realm issues, such as the ultimate aesthetics of movies. The second half of the film, followed by a needle dissection of the society's micro-knowledge, is: "seeing the world". On the 77th birthday of the professor, it was the 17th birthday party of Moa Tuo. At this time, the children and grandchildren of the professor's students all appeared on the stage, and people's clothes were finally a little brighter. It may be that the back of the times has arrived in Japan after the war. It's time for economic recovery. But the professor was so excited that he gave these grandchildren his birthday cake and taught them the truth of life that took them a lifetime to learn. The children looked at each other in dismay. In fact, is it not that people's values have changed after the war, and the traditional values of the older generation have fallen apart? Also at the birthday banquet, the professor suddenly had an unstable pulse. After being rescued, he was sent home to rest. When the skinny student came back, he saw that the monk and student were still eating. The monk student said lightly, "His time hasn't come yet."
In the professor's house, a duo of fat and thin students, and two other students (one of them played by Akira Kurosawa's penultimate film "Dream" (1990) entered the artist in Van Gogh's painting. It can be said that , Akira Kurosawa completed the last two works of his life here, exploring an ingenious intertext for the ultimate aesthetics of the film. The four students who were watching the night for the professor were drinking outside the bedroom, and the fat students were not at ease, because the professor's family doctor had instructed If I can sleep peacefully tonight, the professor will be fine. So the fat student repeatedly clawed through the door to observe the professor secretly, and it was very similar to the time when he simulated the thief testing the safety of the professor's house in the movie. Lying down, it seemed to rest, under the warm lamp, the professor had a dream, the scene in the dream was his childhood, playing hide-and-seek with a group of children, he hid himself in the hay, and the splendid sky was "Dream" The sky here, the impressionistic sky in Van Gogh's writings, is the colorful sky where the white rabbit in the myth was saved when the professor and his students were drinking, and it is the old song he loves to sing. There, Henri Rousseau's fairy tale is strong and fascinating. phantom sky...
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