Rhapsody in August

I am a great fan of Kurosawa and I was so shock how bore this film was when I first saw it in theatre back in the 90s. I know Kurosawa always hide some message in his late movies and, after twenty years, I decided to rent the DVD again to examine the movie in detail. As I got into the movie, I start to understand what Kurosawa want to say. This movie is about how the younger Japanese are abandon their own culture and at the same time,ironically, it is the American, the one who dropped the atomic bomb in Japan,are reviving the Japanese tradition culture(G.Lucus and S. Spielberg are the one who produced the movie Kagamusa). Also, it is about aging as Kurosawa is part of the aging generation. Old people are being seen by young people as weak, illusions, and hopeless out of time and a burden, but when crisis came,(the storm in the movie) old people would show a trendous strength to protect the young one as the old lady in the movie standing up to the storm; it reflected that even Kurosawa, an old man, still could produces such thoughtful movie. I believe Kurosawa made this movie only for those who understand him and ,to me, this is one of his best even thought I love samurai movies.

This film feels like a story the great Akira Kurosawa wanted to tell. Four grandchildren are staying with their aged grandma outside of Nagasaki. She is a survivor of the bomb in 1945, but her husband, a teacher, perished that day. The grandmother's children are in Hawaii visiting a relative and her husband, who is played by Richard Gere in a fine understated performance. Clark (Gere) and his wife have her father living with them, and they claim he is one of Grandma's brothers, but she cannot remember him. The film becomes a mediation on the war, specifically the devastating effect on Nagasaki. In one particularly touching scene everyone gathers at the school where Grandpa perished that day in August. There is a monument there built for the children who dies there that day, a sculpture of mangled monkey bars. The film is slow moving, meditative, but moving in its best moments. While not among Kurosawa's best work (its virtually impossible to stand up to such greatness), this last film of his is a touching tribute to a part of his life (and so many others) that is both easy to forget, but also impossible not to remember. The acting is uniformly very good, especially the four children and Grandma. Recommended.

A beautiful and deeply moving work,it deals with a taboo subject which is rarely treated on the screen.The approach is much different from that of Alain Resnais in "Hiroshima mon amour",and the main reason is that the director is Japanese.Far from Marguerite Duras' verbal logorrhea,Kurosawa lets us in the tragedy through children's eyes,and their simple and naive words.These children,who visit the memorial, only know what the history books tell:almost nothing.

One of the movie's main subject is building some kind of bridge between two generations(a bridge over troubled water,because the adults are rather unsympathetic characters).Kurosawa's granny is universal,she 's the embodiment of suffering,forgiveness and wisdom."Blame it on the war" she keeps on repeating during the whole movie.And her hard-earned peace of mind ,she tries to communicate it to her four grandsons.She does want to see his brother ,now dying,who emigrated to Hawai and made his fortune in pineapples, a long time ago,and his family.The children's fathers are mean little bourgeois,only interested in these American relatives' dough and luxury mansion with pools,the mothers hateful silly geese.None of them can understand the grandmother any more.

So if there's some hope to be found,it can only lie in the relationship old/young,skipping a whole generation,with the exception of minor Richard Gere character.The four children and their granny sitting under a blue moonlight when the adults are talking social promotion and money is beautifully filmed.But it will not delude for long.The last pictures are a real metaphor:sure the road to follow for the youngsters is the grandmother's one,which does not forget the past ,but it's a rocky road,edged with chasms .

A beautiful, beautiful film. If you only know Kurosawa through Seven Samurai then this will come as something of a shock. Gentle, sensitive, moving and uplifting. The cinematography is sumptuous with plenty of touches that let you know that this is no ordinary film maker. By far the best of his later films in my opinion.

Don't be confused by the 'starring Richard Gere' tag. He only has a minor part, though he takes it well.

Just go and see it!

A good movie is interesting and easy to understand. This is an absolute treasure of a film. A love letter to Nagasaki. An opportunity to see how deeply the atom bomb affected Japanese culture. An opportunity to see a number of the landmarks of the attack. And edited so wonderfully. Kurosawa always highly prized being able to tell the the story in images alone and understood how composition of shots increases content, and this movie has some very quiet sober shots that hit really really hard. It shows how we can fail to see things that are right under our noses for years and years. How things can happen that you never get over. I loved this movie!!!