RHAPSODY IN AUGUST
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
RHAPSODY IN AUGUST is a Japanese-language film by Akira Kurosawa. It stars Sachiko Murase, Hisashi Igawa, Richard Gere. It is written by Kurosawa, based on the novel "Nabe-no-Naka" by Kiyoko Murata. English subtitles. Rated PG for mature themes.
Akira Kurosawa at 81 is establishing his career in a vigorous and creative old age, like the Japanese painter whose artist's name became "Old Man Mad About Painting." Last year a lot of us went to KUROSAWA'S DREAMS, thinking it would be sensei's last hurrah. Fortunately, we youngsters were wrong again.
RHAPSODY is about the way humans forget about painful memories and the importance of remembering and conquering that pain. Pain in this case is in the form of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, as remembered by an old woman Kane (Sachiko Murase) and as discovered by her children and grandchildren.
The grandchildren are the narrative focus of the film. They are stuck with spending the summer at an old-fashioned farm over the mountain from Nagasaki. Granny's been invited to take them to Hawaii to meet the American branch of the family, including Richard Gere (the first American to be cast in a Kurosawa film). She refuses because her husband died that day 9 August 1945. On a shopping trip to Nagasaki, the kids in their American t-shirts discover memorials to the bomb and its victims. For the first time, the horror of that day comes home to them. Kane's children treat the story as bad manners that might offend their new, rich American connections. Gere flies to Japan to apologize, not for the bomb, but for not ever thinking about how his uncle might have died, no never thinking about it.
The scene between Gere and the grandmother is only one of many wondrous moments in this film. His performance, which occupies less than a third of the film, is warm, effortless, mostly in Japanese. Indeed, sensei himself says the film is about human warmth, feelings, kindness. And I would add justice. In the end, Kane has committed a unkindness herself and the final scene of her expiation is remarkable for its visual quality and for the audacious sound track that accompanies it.
Murase as Kane is the soul and emotional and moral center of the movie. Her frail tiny body, with its beautiful face like a mask, burns with a fiery fear and compassion. That final scene, unforgettable as it is, is only one of many, for example, Granny "visiting" her fellow survivor, or Granny eating a bean, that continue to burn vividly in my memory.
The children are charming, but not quite real. They come closest to being mere stick figures that exist only to announce the sensei's message. For better or worse, Kurosawa-san is an artist who is willing to take a chance, even with telling us what we need to hear.
As a film maker, sensei has eschewed the lavish costumes and period charm of RAN and segments of DREAMS to produce what might be the definitive Japanese film. He sticks to medium- and low-camera angles without closeups, long static scenes, and intimate human interactions (as Jeff Shannon pointed out in his review in the Seattle P-I).
To anyone who thinks he or she can sit through a very non-Hollywood film, I recommend RHAPSODY IN AUGUST most highly. Pay what you have to, it's for a good cause.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews