After a career threatening triple blow (latest film on Tokyo have-nots, DODES'KA-DEN/’70, not just rejected, but killing his new Directors’ Commune with their first release, then an apparent suicide attempt), Akira Kurosawa returned to active filmmaking with this Russian-Japanese production. A straightforward, intensely moving tale of Man, Nature & Friendship, epic and intimate, more importantly, beautifully realized. Dersu Uzala (Maksim Munzuk), a solitary hunter in the uncharted Russian East (his family lost years ago to smallpox), he’s both aging & ageless, when he comes across a military surveying unit, led by Captain Vladimir Arsenev* (Yuriy Solomin). With cunning awareness and superior knowledge of the ways, whys & wheres of the forest, Uzala soon becomes invaluable guide & guru, ready for almost any situation, even as the men tease him for his honesty & innocence. But it’s the fast-developing bond with the Captain that leads the film thru a series of adventures and close calls. Captured in immaculate scenes that have the rapture of early silent cinema, of something caught in the moment. (We might be watching Lumière Brothers' ‘actualités’ from 1895 or an early D.W. Griffith California short made near the time of this story.) The film structured in two halves and an epilogue, matching the two expeditions Captain Arsenev had with Uzala as guide, and the failed attempt to bring the now truly aging woodsman into the comfort of city civilization. Fitted with one life-scaled, yet majestic set piece after another, though nothing (perhaps in all film) tops the storm sequence in the first half when last year’s stiff stalks of grass, are gathered at a frenzied pace by the two exhausted men to create a sort of grass igloo as overnight protection from a fast-coming blizzard and certain death. The sort of patient excitement thrillingly realized thru-out the film.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Kurosawa’s return to form lasted thru his next film, KAGEMUSHA/’80. After that, overreach and a great man’s scrappings. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/kagemusha-1980.html
READ ALL ABOUT IT: *The story adapted from Arsenev’s memoirs about his expeditions, including his time with Uzala, while military surveyor to the Czar. Editions in English available online.
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