Dodeskaden - Menschen im Abseits

If there was anything Akira Kurosawa did wrong in making Dodes'ka-den, it was making it with the partnership he formed with the "four knights" (the other three being Kobayaski, Ichikawa, and Konishita). They wanted a big blockbuster hit to kick off their partnership, and instead Kurosawa, arguably the head cheese of the group, delivered an abstract, humanist art film with characters living in a decimated slum that had many of its characters face dark tragedies. Had he made it on a more independent basis or went to another studio who knows, but it was because of this, among some other financial and creative woes, that also contributed to his suicide attempt in 1971. And yet, at the end of the day, as an artist Kurosawa didn't stop delivering what he's infamous for with his dramas: the strengths of the human spirit in the face of adversity. That its backdrop is a little more unusual than most shouldn't be ignored, but it's not at all a fault of Kurosawa's.

The material in Dodes'ka-den is absorbing, but not in ways that one usually finds from the director, and mostly because it is driven by character instead of plot. There's things that happen to these people, and Kurosawa's challenge here is to interweave them into a cohesive whole. The character who starts off in the picture, oddly enough (though thankfully as there's not much room for him to grow), is Rokkuchan, a brain damaged man-child who goes around all day making train sounds (the 'clickety-clack' of the title), only sometimes stopping to pray for his mother. But then we branch off: there's the father and son, the latter who scrounges restaurants for food and the former who goes on and on with site-specific descriptions of his dream house; an older man has the look of death to him, and we learn later on he's lost a lot more than he'll tell most people, including a woman who has a past with him; a shy, quiet woman who works in servitude to her adoptive father (or uncle, I'm not sure), who rapes her; and a meek guy in a suit who has a constant facial tick and a big mean wife- to those who are social around.

There are also little markers of people around these characters, like two drunks who keep stumbling around every night, like clockwork, putting big demands on their spouses, sometimes (unintentionally) swapping them! And there's the kind sake salesman on the bike who has a sweet but strange connection with the shy quiet woman. And of course there's a group of gossiping ladies who squat around a watering hole in the middle of the slum, not having anything too nice to say about anyone unless it's about something erotic with a guy. First to note with all of this is how Kurosawa sets the picture; it's a little post-apocalyptic, looking not of any particular time or place (that is until in a couple of shots we see modern cars and streets). It's a marginalized society, but the concerns of these people are, however in tragic scope, meant to be deconstructed through dramatic force. Like Bergman, Kurosawa is out to dissect the shattered emotions of people, with one scene in particular when the deathly-looking man who has hollow, sorrowful eyes, sits ripping cloth in silence as a woman goes along with it.

Sometimes there's charm, and even some laughs, to be had with these people. I even enjoyed, maybe ironically, the little moments with Rokkuchan (specifically with Kurosawa's cameo as a painter in the street), or the awkward silences with the man with the facial tics. But while Kurosawa allows his actors some room to improvise, his camera movements still remain as they've always been- patient but alert, with wide compositions and claustrophobic shots, painterly visions and faces sometimes with the stylization of a silent drama meant as a weeper. Amid these sometimes bizarre and touching stories, with some of them (i.e. the father and son in the car) especially sad, Kurosawa lights his film and designs the color scheme as his first one in Eastmancolor like it's one of his paintings. Lush, sprawling, spilling at times over the seams but always with some control, this place is not necessarily "lighter"; it's like the abstract has come full-throttle into the scene, where things look vibrant but are much darker underneath. It's a brilliant, tricky double-edged sword that allows for the dream-like intonations with such heavy duty drama.

With a sweet 'movie' score Toru Takemitsu (also responsible for Ran), and some excellent performances from the actors, and a few indelible scenes in a whole fantastic career, Dodes'ka-den is in its own way a minor work from the director, but nonetheless near perfect on its own terms, which as with many Kurosawa dramas like Ikiru and Red Beard holds hard truths on the human condition without too much sentimentality.

This is a movie about the small scale. What could be more fitting for contemporary Japan?

It's too easy to give Kurosawa his laurels on the strength of the Toshiro Mifune films, his great panoramas of mist and rain, and Fuji, always, shrouded, revealed. Dodesukaden (Dodeska-Den in the US release from Janus) brings you right up into the characters, right into their faces, their homes, their hovels, their dreams. It's billed as Kurosawa's first color film. The composition is phenomenal, really. Each shot, no matter how it moves or how it doesn't, is as wonderfully framed as a painting, as balanced as a beautiful face. The color saturation is complete, and yet they seem to float above the screen rather than clobber you or intrude.

I am astounded by this film. I've never thought of Kurosawa as someone who would know how to handle squalor and the rude life of the bottom of the underclass. I was wrong. There isn't a false step in this picture, from the use of color to the editing to the choice of music and the times it's used. It's as moving a portrait of a community as I'll ever see. Dodesukaden belongs at the top of the canon of Kurosawaa's work, with Ran and The Hidden Fortress next to it.

This one tends to get slighted by a lot of critics and Kurosawa fans, but I thought it was wonderful. It's an episodic multi-character study of Tokyo's poorest, who live in a city literally made from garbage. Though it looks like an A-Bomb just hit, the film has a sort of serene beauty thanks to the glorious use of Technicolor. The title comes from the sound made by the insane young man who drives an imaginary trolley through the slum. All the characters were wonderful and all the stories engrossing, but perhaps the most tragic concerns the man and his young son who live in an abandoned car. When not searching for food, they spend their spare time using their imagination to build their dream house. An emotionally moving and beautiful film.

In 1970, after a five year absence, Kurosawa made what would be his first film in color. Dodes' Ka-Den is a film that centers around many intertwining stories that go on in a small Tokyo slum.

The title comes from the sound a mentally retarded boy makes as he imagines he is operating a train. We slowly get to know more of the people in the small community, the two drunks who trade wives because they are not happy with the ones they have. The old man who is the center of the town who helps out a burglar that tries to rob him. The very poor father and son that cannot ever afford a house, so they imagine one up of their own. By the end of the film, the stories all come full circle, some turn out happy, others sad.

Since this was Kurosawa's first color film you can see that he uses it to his advantage and it shows. Maybe too much. This movie goes in many different directions and it's hard to settle down and get into it. But don't get me wrong, Dodes' Ka-Den may not be Kurosawa's best, but coming from the greatest director of all time, it's much better than 99% of today's films.

The title is onomatopoeic, the sound of a streetcar clacking on the rails. It is metaphoric for all that the people who live in the dump cannot have. The misery of those people is illustrated by the passing streetcar which represents the relatively unobtainable rich life of the middle class. The pathos of the little boy and his beloved yet sadly insane father is most touching. This was Kurosawa's first film in colour and he uses beautifully shocking hues, colours seen only in dreams. The movie is surreal and surpassing in beauty. The compassion for humanity is the underling force, but as always, Kurosawa is focused on capturing the beauty of the film. It is a masterwork by a genius of cinema.