Red Beard

Akahige / Red Beard is 3 hours, 5 minutes long, but I strongly recommend it. It shows a definite maturity of style over Samurai (54), Throne of Blood (57), Yojimbo (61), to which it manages to subtly refer. In between was the slow-but-intense Crime/Class drama High and Low (63). Red Beard takes AK's observed modern style back to the feudal setting. One should set aside 4 hours for it, though, as you may need the break and, if you're like me, you'll want to see certain scenes again. Long composed/blocked shots and a "small" story make it seem slow, but I've found it fascinating all three times--rich in detail, with AK's familiar ensemble doing their best acting yet.

This film is practically never mentioned when Akira Kursawas best films are listed. I think this film should be at least one of the first three of such a list! I do love most of his films very much and my private choice of his best film is always this one. I saw it only once, maybe 20 years ago, but the memory of it is still very strong,. Some scenes burned their image into my mind forever! When I saw it at a small art house cinema here in Vienna, Austria, it was like a lovely dream you want to go on and on. I left the cinema thinking I just saw the best film of my life.

True, it not comparable with the story telling masterpiece Rashomon or the complex Seven Samurai. The film does not feature new ways of telling a story. But I think it is Kurosawas most human legacy in a body of work which is rich of statements on humanity. and human weaknesses and strengths. Looking at any list of current films in the cinemas today one can only wish there would be much more films like Red Beard. Films like that can influence the way we see the world, like the current films packed with violence already do. It would be a much better world for sure!

I don't go so far as to single out any part of the story. I would wish every one would see the film as I did, knowing nothing about it except the title and the director. The film speaks for itself.

Akira Kurosawa said about the film, "I had something special in mind when I made this film because I wanted to make something that my audience would want to see it, something so magnificent that people would just have to see it." Humanistic and compassionate, the film tells the story of a young doctor who after graduation from the Dutch Medical School in Nagasaki hopes to become a member of the court medical staff but instead has to take a post as an intern at a Public Clinic for the impoverished patients. The clinic is run by Dr. Nide (Toshiro Mifune) whom the destitute patients call "Red Beard". The long and difficult journey awaits the young doctor – from the initial shock and denial to work at the clinic, to learning how to understand his patients, care for them s and see the humans in them. Kurosawa describes the film, one of his directorial pinnacles as a "monument to the goodness in man". It also can be called a monument to his talent and humanism.

In the Nineteenth Century, in Japan, the arrogant and proud just-graduated Dr. Noboru Yasumoto (Yuzo Kayama) is forced to work in the Koshikawa Clinic, a non-profit health facility ruled by Dr. Kyojio Niide (Toshirô Mifune), a.k.a. "Red Beard". "Red Beard" is a good, sentimental, but also very firm, strong and fair man. While in the clinic, Dr. Yasumoto becomes responsible for healing the hurt teenager Otoyo (Terumi Niki), and he learns a lesson of humanity, becoming a better man.

"Akahige" is another magnificent work of Master Akira Kurosawa. The touching and low-paced story is very beautiful, and shows the redemption of a spoiled man that becomes a human being, learning important and worthwhile values of life. It is almost impossible to highlight one individual performance in such a spectacular cast, but Toshirô Mifune shows his versatility in the role of the good "Red Beard". The 185 running time, with intermission, does not make any part of this interesting story boring, and this film is highly recommended for any sensitive audience. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "O Barba Ruiva" ("The Red Beard")

This was the sixth Kurosawa film I ever saw, in a film-viewing binge that began with Seven Samurai and has yet to satiate me. It did, however, mark a turning point for me as it did for him.

Up to then, I had only seen the B&W Samurai classics of the 50s and early 60s. The must-sees: not just Seven Samurai, but Yojimbo and Throne of Blood. The under-appreciated Sanjuro, and the light but enduring Hidden Fortress. This was my first non-samurai film from him. What I did not realise until later was that it was his career apotheosis.

Red Beard is not Kurosawa's best film. Yet when it came out, it was a phenomenon much like Titanic 30 years later. It broke the bank, it was an exercise in unprecedented creative and financial power by a major filmmaker, and it appealed to filmgoers like few filmes before or since. Kurosawa built a hospice and miniature village for his characters to inhabit, and this episodic story of a young star doctor discovering a vocation among the poor under the gruff "red beard" (Mifune) feels all the more authentic for it. It is a film of such deliberate ease and confidence that it could only be made by this director, at this point in his career. It could not be anything less than the fullest exploration of his most cherished themes - social injustice, the redemptive power of human kindness, personal codes. It could also do nothing but foreshadow his decline.

That's a lot of expectation to pile onto the unsuspecting viewer, so what do you get during those 3 hours? You get a first-class drama, Mifune's finest performance, and one of the most beautiful tear-jerkers ever to grace a screen. All the while, countless instances of technical brilliance remind you why this film could only be made by this director: a surgery covered in nothing but an extended closeup of the young doctor, an eerie seduction covered in an almost static, dreamlike wide shot, and, halfway through, the ass-kicking of a life-time and its touching follow-up.

This is an extinct form of filmmaking, one preserved in the ember of its stark black-and-white film stock. The cinematic equivalent of a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton: there are ways in which you won't relate, but it is daunting, powerful, and a journey into an intriguing other world well worth spending 3 hours in, and then some.