Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

TinsHeadline Touches You

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

sol- Friendship blossoms between a Russian army captain and a local hunter he recruits to guide his soldiers through the wilderness in this Akira Kurosawa epic filmed on location in the Soviet Union. The film benefits from Kurosawa's eye for natural beauty when it comes to vast landscapes untouched by civilisation, however, what really drives the film is the bond that develops between the main characters - and in spite of other soldiers ridiculing the local hunter behind his back. This very real bond leads to an especially engaging final quarter in which the captain tries to give the hunter a better life by inviting him to live with him, only to discover that despite their deep friendship, they each want something different out of life ("how do you live inside a box?"). The first three quarters of the film are not quite as compelling as this final section, but they are still engaging enough as the two main characters survive through harsh conditions, coming to appreciate each other just a little more in the process. The movie may have benefited from less focus on the other soldiers who are rather dull and ultimately interchangeable, and yet, they serve as an acute counterpoint to their captain who is able to see past stereotypes and racial prejudice and recognise right away the skills, talent and humanity of the hunter who, in some ways, is more civilised than the soldiers who mock him.

gavin6942 The Russian army sends an explorer (Yury Solomin) on an expedition to the snowy Siberian wilderness where he makes friends with a seasoned local hunter (Maxim Munzuk).In 1971, in true samurai fashion, Kurosawa attempted suicide due to a bad moment of his career, questioning his creative ability after the commercial failure of "Dodes'ka-den" the year before, and the subsequent denial of funds for his productions by Japanese studios. Luckily, he survived.How crazy this is. Apparently he had wanted to adapt the story to a Japanese setting, but ended up with the original Russian tale with Russian actors and crew. Did Kurosawa speak Russian? Did they speak Japanese? The sheer logistics of bringing this production to fruition is impressive.

Lee Eisenberg Akira Kurosawa's breathtaking "Dersu Uzala" looks at a meeting of cultures in pre-revolutionary Russia, as a captain in the czar's army befriends a hunter in Russia's far east. Even as Dersu helps the platoon negotiate the forest and tundra, it is clear that his way of life is dying out as the Russian Empire expands and swallows the indigenous peoples of northeast Asia.The movie has some of the most amazing cinematography. I wouldn't expect a Kurosawa movie to be anything except great, but this movie has to be seen to be believed. There is no description that I can give that will do "Dersu Uzala" justice. It is one of the movies that you must see before you die.

Steffi_P Sometimes, it is possible to see how a movie director's changing life has impacted on the way in which he or she approaches making a motion picture. Don't worry, I'm not some crazy auteurist; I'm not talking about themes or symbolism, just the changing relationship between the camera and the material. In 1970 Akira Kurosawa suffered the disastrous commercial and critical failure of Dodesukaden, a picture he had poured a lot of his own funds into producing. Soon after this lifelong humanist made what we can assume was an earnest but thankfully unsuccessful suicide attempt. Dersu Uzala was his the picture he made next.Dersu Uzala is often categorised as an anomaly in the Kurosawa filmography anyway, as it was his only feature made outside his native Japan. This adaptation of a Russian explorer's memoir is a potentially serious departure for a director who previously wrote all his own scripts and always seemed to have his finger on the pulse of Japanese society. Still, the wilderness setting and interaction between humanity and landscape in the story ultimately makes this a tale that could be of any time or place. The largely Russian film crew seems particularly in tune with the Japanese director's sensibilities. The musical scoring by Isaak Shvarts has that beautiful haunting quality of Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, which Kurosawa would no doubt have appreciated. His long-term director of photography Asakazu Nakai works with a pair of Russian cinematographers to great some wonderful images that have the warm softness of impressionist painting.This last point is particularly important for the late-period Kurosawa. He had long been an accomplished amateur painter, but never has this been more apparent in his film work than in Dersu Uzala. We now see in him a desire to create smooth tonal patterns for the screen, creating compositions that are primarily for aesthetic value, even something as mundane as the shot of sleeping soldiers before they meet Dersu, in which everything is arranged in harmonious diagonals. Howard Hawks once derided the widescreen format as being a bad move because it was a shape rarely chosen by painters, but Kurosawa manages perfectly with it. Painterly his approach may be but it is still cinematic. His frequent use of movement in depth shows his understanding of the frame as a three-dimensional space as oppose to simply a short, wide box. Often a little movement and sound adds to the overall impression, the ripple of water, the crackle of fire and the noises of wind and creatures. With complete control over every element of a shot, Kurosawa is constantly seeking to evoke the might of the forest, its beauty and its mystery.This may be conjecture, but it may be that Kurosawa, shaken by his recent experiences and advancing age, is here taking a step back, unable to connect with fully his subject and humanity in general. After all, painting is generally a solitary pursuit. There are no close-ups in Dersu Uzala, and an unusually low proportion of mid-shots. We are rarely encouraged to focus on facial expressions, and almost always take the place of detached observers, lurking in the bushes. Also contrary to much of Kurosawa's earlier pictures, in which the acting was often flamboyant and hammy, the players here are subdued and realistic – something which incidentally lead players Yuri Solomin and Maxim Munzuk respond especially well to, with Munzuk's performance being incredibly moving at times in its subtle expression. And yet Kurosawa barely allows us to feel as if we know these characters. The physical sense of distance makes us feel like voyeurs on their lives, and while the picture is filled with breathtaking beauty the director's tendency to envelop us in the human warmth of a story has vanished.However as an uplifting postscript, Dersu Uzala was a considerable success, especially at the Russian box office, also gaining recognition elsewhere including an Oscar for Best foreign picture. This veteran director, back from the brink of despair, would soon make some fruitful collaborations with Hollywood producers, and his career would end in a blaze of glory.