In my last article I wrote about one of my favorite directors, Akira Kurosawa, and Ran, his adaptation of King Lear . Kurosawa was well read in western literature, and also made adaptations of Macbeth ( Throne of Blood ), Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich ( Ikiru ), and works by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Maxim Gorky. Kurosawa was a master of identifying characteristics that made stories universal, thus making western classics accessible to Japanese audiences. What is even more impressive is, however, how many of his 1950s-era Japanese films became classics in world cinema, and have remained in the western collective conscience ever since. To my eye, Kurosawa made two different types of film. There are the “jidaigeki” samurai epics, set in feudal Japan, all evoking a distant past – films such as Rashomon, Ran, Kagemusha, and Yojimbo. These are how most audiences think of Kurosa...
Malcolm Coates