Word: dersu
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Slaughterhouse 5. Harvard Square, Tuesday at 1:30, 5:45, and 10:05 p.m. With Dersu Uzla...
...Dersu Uzala. At the Galeria, daily...
...Dersu Uzalu. A very fine film, but a regression, albeit in color, to Akira Kurosawa's early days of static, pictorial movie-making. I prefer the raging, audacious Kurosawa of "Seven Samurai" and "Yojimbo," but this simple piece, a memoir about a little old hunter, has undeniable charm, pathos, and humor. The rich colors and meticulous compositions become frustrating after awhile--we want Kurosawa to shake off his awe of the wilderness and plunge into it with the old daring and fervor--but there's something heartwarming about a touch this sure, and the wisdom and taste to know when...
...first part of the film, both men are marooned on a vast frozen lake. Dersu saves them from freezing by building a hut cut of dry grass, deploying some tools of civilization (rifles, a surveying instrument) as the frame for the shelter. It is the Captain, however, who later pulls Dersu out of a rushing river by constructing a rescue device from a felled tree and a couple of leather belts. The scene is both exciting and funny: Dersu, clinging to a rock in the water, has to shout instructions to the Captain...
...Later, Dersu goes to live with the Captain and his family in town. But he is gradually stifled. Kurosawa is not facile, and he does not hymn the natural man just to condemn the spiritual debilitations of modern life. Dersu Uzala takes place during the first decade of the century and suggests that the ideal reconciliation of urban knowledge and bucolic temperament is, sadly, unattainable. Dersu Uzala may be a shade over-inflated and simplistic, but it also has the clear resonance of genius. Kurosawa can find grandeur in the intimate as well as the infinite...