Distance

Rating: Null/10 (15 September 2003)

Anime has yet to get this good. Ran is so much more concerned with all the tiny details that anime skips on that I can't help but be amazed with Kurosawa, not so much his prowess, but his commitment. Kurosawa's eye is both poignant yet far away, creating a feeling one-half stage play, one half 60s movie. He avoids close-ups and prefers the lavish grandeur associated with his paintings. In most aspects, this works.
In actuality, I am more in favor of his exposition scenes and less concerned with his depiction of war. I am sick of battle scenes, have seen enough of them in movies to last me a lifetime and very few have been any good. While Kurosawa is keen to use a flurry of images to create a sense of confusion and motion, the editing and music do not lend appropriate moods. Had he gone for more detailed one-on-one shots, the kind John Woo loves to cram in his gunfights, I would have better things to say. The inclusion of nature throughout is more sophisticated than The Thin Red Line, kudos.
Sound and text are two areas that take the biggest beating. In the first battle, the music drowns everything out and creates no atmosphere in itself. In the second one, the cacophony of gunfire, not to mention the repetition of horsemen getting shot, boils everything down to monotony. If modern effects technicians touched this up on par with The Wild Bunch, it would be worth your ears. As others have said, the script is no match for Shakespearean dialog, but I find the plot to be more refined and stimulating compared to the original King Lear. No more eurocentric biases.
Overall, this is a brilliant Kurosawa film more than worth watching. Perhaps he and Kubrick were the only 80s directors to really understand what auteur theory was. (87.5%)