Dodes’kaden
I think I remember Gorp recommending this film, but typically I take note of everything Gorp recommends to me (see the my watchlists) but I can’t find this one… does this mean I lost other recommendations too? Ahhhh.
Recently, during the Berlinale I have named Ozu, Mizoguchi and Naruse as the big three of Japanese cinema. Shii and Pixelmatsch were surprised that I didn’t count Kurosawa, but the truth is – he really doesn’t feel Japanese to me. I don’t even consider this movie particularly Japanese, because using the contemporary slums as a topic feels so utterly un-Japanese? Even so, after being rather disappointed by “Ugetsu Monogatari” (why are people so into it?) I can say for sure that I prefer Kurosawa over Mizoguchi. By far.
In typical Loris style, I’d say that Dodes’kaden is the kind of film that needs to sink in. However, the impressions were also so deep that I wanted to write about them instantly. First of all, I think that the movie is a masterpiece and I can’t understand why it was a critical and commercial failure. (OK, I can easily understand why it was a commercial failure.) It’s beautiful and sad and human and just so true. It took about 20 minutes to get into the film (the first 10 are spent almost without plot anyways), but then I started loving it. Dodes’kaden made me laugh and cry, I wanted to look away in anger and heartbreak. Oh my goodness, this movie is so heartbreakingly sad, it’s too difficult to take at times.
The film does not look beautiful, but it’s a Kurosawa and outward beauty is not an important point in his films. Kurosawa is all about story-telling and drama and less about visual beauty like the aforementioned big three. Nevertheless, it’s not like Kurosawa put no thoughts into the visuals, he actually uses the colors with a clear agenda in mind. Just like Godard, he seems to have a preference for bright base colors – blue, yellow and red. As you can see in the aptly chosen screenshot in this Criterion essay, Kurosawa made the women’s buckets call back to their clothes, which also calls back to their husband’s word uniforms, yellow and red respectively. Considering that their storyline is about switching husbands, this choice of color adds to its comic effect.
It is rare that an omnibus film with so many characters touches me on such a deep level because you don’t spend as much time with each character. (Woody Allen and Robert Altman, I am looking at you, you should have learned from Kurosawa!) “Dodes’kaden” is an unusual little gem, an emotional rollercaster that I am afraid to get onto again.
Noted, procurement started.