• 赤ひげ (Red Beard)

11/27/20 (Fri)

This 1965 work is one of Kurosawa’s most popular and acclaimed films, so I was looking forward to seeing it despite the off-putting three-hour running time.

The setting is a rural village in the mid-19th century towards the end of the Edo Era. A privileged medical student (Kayama Yuzo) expecting to serve as the shogun’s physician pays greetings at a poor public clinic in what he believes a formality, only to learn that he has in fact been assigned there. He detests his surroundings, complaining of the low life and stink (“the smell of the poor”, he is told), and imperiously refuses to wear the uniform or follow the rules. He is eventually won over by the clinic’s virtuous head doctor, known as Red Beard (Mifune Toshiro), who seeks to heal his patients’ souls as well as their bodies (shades of the earlier Drunken Angel). Moreover, his experience with a sickly young waif in the film’s second half brings him an understanding of the struggles of the kindly townspeople. He eventually receives his commission to the shogun, but turns the offer down in order to stay and help the underprivileged (probably a good thing since the already struggling shogunate was overthrown just a few years later).

A film full of clichés and melodrama. Continue reading →