Rapsodia en agosto

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!!!

When I saw this movie, I remembered Louis-Ferdinand Celine's book, "Journey to the End of the Night", a anti-war book. Reading reviews about the movie, listening to what people in the US had to say, seeing the reaction of the American media to this movie, I was sad, simply sad. This movie is not about Japan, it's not about America, it could have been anywhere a war had happened.

This movie is a poem against war and the scars it leaves forever deep in the mind of the people who suffered those wars. Those who didn't suffer a war are lucky, and shouldn't be blamed for being this lucky, but they should see movies like this to understand what war is about. The world is never better after war. The first ones to agree to settle things through warfare are the ones who didn't suffer war. There are no winners in a war, just remember.

I'm sorry that all those who felt attacked in their pride as Americans are missing the point of this movie. If your father or your grandfather, or your friend has been to war, just listen to them.

The performance of the grandmother will make you forget you're watching a movie! It is filmed simply and un-pretentiously, though is a very emotional film.

Enjoy.

PS: Oh and I'm not Japanese...

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 .

I got really bore at first time when I saw this movie in theatre in 1992. Since I know Kurosawa is a perfectionist and usually try to say something important in his movie, I am sure there are some hidden message in his story other than the obvious. After twenty years, I decided to rent the out the DVD to examine the movie in detail. I was not disappointed and the true theme revealed to me immediately and I love it even the 3rd and 4th time. It was not just about the H-bomb incidence. It was a way for Kurosawa to tell the how young Japanese generation abandoned their own tradition culture and it is the American, once the enemy of Japan, are reviving it for the country. His second major theme was about old people who seen to be weak, senile and out of time, but when circumstance arise, they could still release plenty of energy to protect their youngs like how he still could such powerful movie like Rhphsody in August. I believe Kurosawa did this movie strictly for his fans to enjoy because unless you understand his thought, this movie is extremely boring at the surface, look as if it is produced by an old man out of touch with his time.

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.