Saturday, October 27, 2007

"Red Beard" (Language - Japanese) (1965) - Movie Classics

It has been nine months I watched “Red Beard” one another classic master piece of Akira Kurosawa. And during these nine months, I have tried writing a review for it and never got it completed. Not that it failed to grip me but the enormity of the film’s numerous stories and facets of changing faces has often left me looking for words. I write this on my fourth sitting and still not sure whether I will be able to complete it. Let me make an attempt to cover the entirety of the film.

Films extracting the tough and delicate environment of a hospital have the arduous task of assembling the life sufferings, pain and the joy of coming out of terrible physical and mental conditions. There are movies dealing with doctors solving complex conditions, cracking up a tough patient and the tragedy. “Red Beard” involves those but it directly relates to the social conditions and the cruelty done to the society. Innocent beings getting tortured and mutilated for the materialistic profits are liberated in this film. And I am not talking about the patients but the young doctor who learns life and knowledge is more than reputation and materials.

Dr. Noboru Yasumoto (Yuzo Kayama) is a youth with the zeal but the absence of patience. He enters the hospital run by Dr. Kyojio Niide (Toshirô Mifune) known popularly as Red Beard. Dr. Niide is a strict and disciplined person. He is bold and at any point of time not hesitant to tell what he thinks. He knows the process of how a new person gets indicted in an environment of this kind. Dr. Yasumoto is immediately dejected and frustrated by the actions of Dr. Niide. He refuses to function and opts for being stubborn. In between the time he is about to settle, the doctor who Dr. Yasumoto replaces bad mouths about Dr. Niide. This propels the uneasiness and the tough environment the hospital poses over him. Dr. Yasumoto is head strong due to his knowledge over the material of medical treatments. But he gets the real tinge of how realistically brutal is the line of physical treatment. He goes unconscious when Dr. Niide and his associate try to operate a female without anesthesia.

This is the initial hour and half of battle between Dr. Niide and Dr. Yasumoto. The remaining part of the movie deals with how slowly the young doctor understands the passion and commitment Dr. Niide has over his job which ignites the same in him. He feels inferior to have opted to run out of the hospital to be the personal physician of Shogunate. While it seems that this movie is only about the issue of a young doctor discovering his ability and application of it, the film focuses on social and philosophical issues in depth. The emotions and the world of uncertainty are exposed. The story of love and dedication is stamped in various sequences. Kurosawa even deals with the delicate subject of infatuation. Dr. Yasumoto rescues a girl, Otoyo (Terumi Niki) from the streets and saves her from the miserable position of being in a brothel by a crude old lady. In a movie when we think a character is in love, hate with subtlety of expressions, we look for other characters to tell those. Here Kurosawa uses the nurses and people who work in the hospital. They taunt among them on the girl’s jealousy when the doctor looks for other female of his own age.

Kurosawa does not waste any of these people laying, wandering the center of hopes, desolation and death. There is person facing his death and has earned the respect of the other entire patient when he is taken to his home for his last breath. He painfully confides on the loss and desperation he had in the minimal life he spent. Similarly the small kid who comes stealing and falls in friendship of the Otoyo and how he is lacerated and wounded by the depths of poverty of society through those two innocent eyes but has seen the worst scenario.

This obsession towards nature of Kurosawa is an exhibition of his characteristic. The season and rain are the elements he uses with an acquired and born mix of skill and implementation. As per the story and the narration the weather alters itself not in a sense of awareness the audience might create but fitting in a perfect sensible anchor for the scene. And the conviction and reasoning for the actions of characters he gives completes them. Dr. Yasumoto learning the complete person of Dr. Niide, we have this knowledge well ahead than him. Not because we are given the details of Dr. Niide, in fact we get to know completely along with Yasumoto but it is the situation of the hospital. One who would opt to stay in the heart of illness and sorrow with small to no hope towards amenities and survival of a patient, it is the will, courage and humanism in this steel bodied acerbic character. We make judgments but positive view towards the characters which has those. The closure is full circle and it is not formulaic but justified.

Every Kurosawa’s movie is punctuated by the performance of Toshirô Mifune and here it is accentuated by the entire cast. The supporting roles have their time of independence to have their screen and they improvise it well. After nine months, I do not exactly remember every detail of the film but the trembling tragic moment of the kid with a face inscribed into the viewer’s heart is still visible clear. My attempt may not have covered the spectrum of omnipresent emotions in film running over three hours but managed to retain one solid image to give the readers a gist of the presentation which is the kid’s face of defeated and melancholic tragedy. Kurosawa produces one or more images of this sort in his every film.

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