Hakuchi

Although severely mutilated, this film still distillates the genius of Kurosawa, unfortunately the artistic decisions are still made by the people who have the money, not by the people who have the talent.

For the people who have read Dostoievski's "The Idiot", I think this film will be an amazing experience. For the rest the movie probably won't be very clear, because the studio edited off over an hour of footage, which obviously crippled the movie.

That was the luck which Kurosawa's "The Idiot" ran. And many of other films too.

Regards

One of Kurosawa's least-seen films is "The Idiot". The film is set in Hokkaido, the northernmost area of Japan. Deep snow covers the earth, and is shoveled into barriers, seeps in through the ruins of a warehouse in great drifts, piles up against the windows in crescents, howls fiercely as Toshiro Mifune's character and Matsayuki Mori's "Prince Myishkin" step foot off a train into a blizzard.

Dostoevsky's great novel is the resource material.The Prince Myishkin character is Christ-like in the novel, and, as transplanted to Japan may be seen as a Boddhisatva-like character (an Avalokiteshvara or Kanon-a saint of compassion). Matsayuki Mori does an amazing job of portraying a damaged but compassionate soul..one that feels deeply the pain of those he encounters, and who speaks the truth simply, with a pure heart and an awareness of suffering. In one scene, he holds Toshiro Mifune's face between his small, gentle hands, and there is such a tender sensibility, his hands seem to communicate love and absorb the pain of Mifune's character. It is a breathtaking moment.

Toshiro Mifune is brilliantly cast as the thuggish suitor who vies with Mori for the soul of the beautiful and doomed Taeko Nasu character played with uncharacteristic drama by Setsuko Hara.

This complex, rich, layered, frightening, deeply disturbing film has been under-appreciated from the outset-beginning with the studio, which cut the film drastically (Kurosawa was outraged! *see trivia). Japanese audiences didn't understand or like the film, and other audiences have found it weird. Some of this relates directly to Donald Richie's seminal work on Kurosawa and his conclusion that "The Idiot" was a failure. Unfortunately, Richie's conclusion seems to have put replaced the nails in "The Idiot's" coffin with screws. It's very hard to pry open the film.

Sure, it is a weird film...that's what is so interesting. Kurosawa has made one of the most powerfully strange films, while stretching the range of his actors (have you ever imagined you would see Setsuko Hara like this? She's terrifying in her desperation and pain!) giving the scenes a grounded reality, and allowing us to enter into the lives of these tragic, doomed souls.

This is one of the finest films of world cinema, although one of the least-viewed.

jonr-3 from Kansas City wonders if the 265-minute version will ever be released.

The answer is a definitive NO because every frame of unreleased footage no longer exists anywhere in any form.

It's a shame, because the film -- fascinating and electrifying as it is in its present form -- would probably have been one of the greatest examples of intertextual cinema of all time had it survived!

One can easily imagine what we're missing simply by examining the way that the initial scene on the train plays out as Mori explains his dream about nearly being executed to Mifune -- and then we are presented with a jarringly disturbing cut to a long intertitle, which basically seems to explain what was cut out by the studio execs [as do the many intertitles which follow]...

Kurosawa's hero-worship of Doestoevsky may be compared to his similar adoration of Gorky and his play "The Lower Depths" -- which is faithfully adapted in the 1957 filmic version -- and although it is much shorter than the tale told by The Idiot {sorry, couldn't resist!}, this reverence in no way makes the film boring or inferior. Just compare it to the 1936 Renoir version (which is quite good in many ways in its own right) to see how this faithfulness pays off...

Read the Doesty and then watch the film and fill in the blanks yourself. Kurosawa's filmic blueprint provides plenty of clues to how the missing footage might have been incorporated into this extremely underseen masterpiece.

Dostoevsky was director Kurosawa Akira's favorite author. According to Kurosawa, nobody could depict humanity better. Therefore Hakuchi (The Idiot, 1951) was a passion project for Kurosawa, which he executed as a four-hour magnum opus. As you might guess, movie studios are rarely interested in these sorts of passion projects...

The Idiot was Kurosawa's first film for Shochiku after Scandal (1950). When he delivered his four-hour cut, the studio decided "nope", and edited a 100 minute (!) version out of it. Kurosawa was furious, and didn't make another film for the studio for 40 years. During the filming of Hachi-gatsu no rapusodi (Rhapsody in August, 1991), the director tried to locate a full cut from the studio archives, but the four-hour cut is apparently lost forever. Thankfully what remains for us later audiences, is not the 100 minute briefing by Shochiku, but an edit that lasts almost three hours. As always, it's difficult to say what an extra hour could have added to the narrative. But one thing is sure. At least you would not need to read intertitles in a sound film!

I recently read the Dostoevsky novel and watched a Soviet film adaptation by director Ivan Pyrev (1958). Perhaps Pyrev had witnessed Kurosawa's infamous 100 minute cut, and thereafter decided to not be an "idiot" himself, and to instead do the film in parts. Pyrev's adaptation only tells book one, and he never got to make a sequel for it. I thought his film was okay. As for the book, it wasn't among my favorite things by Dostoevsky, whom I usually adore. I would recommend Kurosawa's film for anyone who happened to like the novel. If you haven't read it, you are going to be a little confused. Imagine how confused the Japanese audiences must have been upon witnessing the 100 minute cut...

Kurosawa's film is interesting, because it differs from anything else that he directed. Partly this comes in the form of negative things. Both the source material and the editing-history make this an unusually unsure film for Kurosawa. The novel doesn't have much actually happening, which is very unlike your typical Kurosawa narratives, that are straight-forward.

Yet the best things in this adaptation are really great. Kurosawa's black and white depiction of winter in Sapporo is stunningly beautiful and helps to capture the emotional coldness of the narrative. The casting is also mostly excellent, once you get used to the fact that General Epanchin's wife is now the grandmother from Tokyo Story (1953). Hara Setsuko has been cast against type as the femme fatale, and this insane contrast serves to keep the film constantly interesting when she is onscreen. Hara is a movie star on the same level with Greta Garbo, and offers magnificent close-ups throughout the film. Mifune's rough temper is also perfect for the role of Rogozhin, and he does great job. Kuga Yoshiko also gives a good performance.

The only one, about whom I have reservations, is Mori Masayuki as the lead character, Prince Myshkin in the novel. In all his versatility, Mori is one of my favorite actors from Japan, but in this version the lead character has been written to be too undetermined. Myshkin as a character is kind, but also verbally talented, and therefore the way Kurosawa has directed Mori to look at everything like a confused puppy didn't really work for me.

Because I am not a great fan of the novel, it is difficult for me to say, what should have been added to make this a better film. It is clear that the first meeting of Mifune and Mori in the beginning has been drastically edited, and other introductions, too, seem to have been cut, making the film more confusing. It is interesting to wonder, if Shochiku had allowed Kurosawa to release the four-hour cut, had he done the film AFTER Shichinin no samurai (Seven Samurai, 1954)...

Currently clocking in at a mere 2.75 hours -- following the lopping off of 100 minutes from Kurosawa's (unreleased) original version -- this barely scratches the surface of the plot of Dostoevsky's tremendous novel. Kurosawa modernizes the story and moves it from Russia in summer to Hokkaido in winter. The great Russian director Grigori Kozintsev thought this film captured the spirit of the novel remarkably well -- and who am I to disagree. I seriously wonder whether someone unfamiliar with the novel could follow this film, in its currently disjointed state -- but for those who know and love Dostoevsky's story (and characters), this film is a delight and a revelation. By and large, the actors do a remarkable job of capturing the essence of Dostoevsky's cast. I simply cannot imagine a more suitable Rogozhin (Akama in the film) than Toshiro Mifune -- especially when watching him "merely" standing in the background looking like a bomb ready to explode. Next most convincing was Chieko Higashiyama as Satoko, Ayako's mother not Takeko's as IMDB incorrectly records (Elizaveta Prokofyevna Yepanchin in the novel). This "Edith Bunker as Russian noblewoman" character has always been one of my favorite Dostoevsky creations -- and CH gets every aspect of the character right. Setsuko Hara as Taeko (Natalia Fillipovna) and Yoshiko Kuga as Ayako (Aglaya Ivanovna) are wonderful, as is Takashi Shimura as Ono, Ayako's father (General Yepanchin). Masayuki Mori as Kameda (Prince Myshkin, the eponymous hero of the tale) is hard to assess -- as the "idiot" role is hard to envision. I am not certain that he is the perfect Myshkin, but he is certainly a touching one.

Interlinked with the extraordinarily fine acting, is Kurosawa's tremendous direction here (or what's left of it). I recently also saw an otherwise fine Russian version of "Crime and Punishment", which failed to capture the richness of tone of the novel, missing every trace of any sort of humor (an essential element of the book). Kurosawa, on the other hand, managed to ricochet from melodrama to humor to tragedy without missing a beat -- sometimes within the bounds of a single shot. Frankly, I never would have thought this possible. Another interesting facet of the direction here -- this often looked more like a silent film from the 20s or 30s than a film of the 50s.