Word: dersu
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Dates: during 1976-1976
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Akira Kurosawa is one of the few epic poets of the cinema, and his new movie, Dersu Uzala, brought the festival moments of real majesty. Shot in Russia-in 70-mm. screen size and stereophonic sound-Dersu Uzala is a rather delicate fable about the friendship between a Russian surveyor (Juri Solomine) and the man he employs as a guide. Dersu Uzala (ebulliently and affectionately played by Maxim Munzuk) lives in the forests of eastern Siberia in easy alliance with the natural order. The surveyor, called "the Captain," is a man of science and precision. Dersu is a creature...
...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...