Akira Kurosawa

I chose to look at Akira Kurosawa’s films this week because I have already seen a few of them. Besides this meaning that I have a bit of a head-start, I also really enjoyed the films I’d seen, and was happy to watch more. I’ve now seen four of his films (Throne of Blood, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, and Ran), which seemed like a lot until I looked up his biography and saw that he’s directed 30 films, and served as assistant director or screenwriter on a few more. All of the films I watched were historical stories, usually about samurai or war (also, two of them were based on Shakespeare’s plays).

Now that I’ve seen several of his movies, I’m trying to think of Kurosawa’s role as an author of his movies. For me, the word “author” implies someone with a lot of influence, or complete control, over how a piece of literature is created and presented. For film, I can see how “author” wouldn’t really apply to only a director, as the filmmaking process is such a collaborative effort: is the author of the film the director, the screenwriter, the director of photography? Maybe the sound designer or even the actors play a more important role in the outcome of the film? There are so many different elements that go into making a movie that it seems hard to credit the whole piece to one person. That said, Kurosawa served as director, screenwriter, editor, and sometimes producer on many of his films (at least, all of the films I watched). It becomes easier to imagine that he had a strong influence over the movie when he was directly responsible for so many aspects of it. I think that many directors could not be considered true authors of their films (at least, not the only one), but because of his involvement, maybe Kurosawa can be.

There are many themes that reoccur through most of his movies, such as the individual hero (as seen in Yojimbo), or the lust for power (Throne of Blood and Ran), and of course the interest in historical dramas, that unify Kurosawa’s films in a way that he must have been controlled. To be fair, I’ve only seen four of his movies, and I’ve been specifically interested in the historical ones (thanks to a few weeks of watching samurai movies obsessively as research for my thesis). So, my understanding of his work is relatively small, and my opinion might be biased. And I’m still not convinced that Kurosawa can be considered the sole author of his films (I think it’s very important to credit cinematographers who worked with him on the superbly-designed black and white films, or actors such as Toshiro Mifune who alone collaborated with Kurosawa on half of his films). But, I would believe that Kurosawa played a bigger role in his films that most directors can claim, and he can come pretty close to being considered an “author”.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

For this class I read the screenplay for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”. It was interesting to read a story in this format, because without visuals it’s really tough to figure out what the mood of the story is. At least, that’s how it for this story. At first the screenplay read as a relatively serious romantic story, aside from a few weird bits (for example, I had trouble picturing the old woman in the commuter tube over New York in any kind of serious way). However, once I got to the scenes where Joel was trying to hide Clementine in his childhood memories, I had a lot of trouble picturing that in a non-comical way.

My point is, I would prefer to push that comical, oddball mood in the film, rather than letting it get serious. Here's how I would achieve that:

- The entire movie is seen in a jumble of out-of-order memories, so the whole thing should feel a bit weird and disjointed. However, in the climax of the film (when Joel and Clementine are trying to escape the disappearing memories), I would like for these different scenes to literally be overlapping. For example, Joel talks to Carrie sitting in a car, then looks out the window and sees himself seated at a kitchen table in the middle of the road. He stands up from the table and walks off the road and onto a beach, where he walks past himself seated by the bonfire.

- Although the screenplay described the scenes with Joel remembering his early childhood with him being shrunken down to an appropriate child-size, I would rather see a full-sized Joel in these scenes. Adult Joel having a bath in the kitchen sink, adult Joel being beaten up by elementary school children, etc. I want to emphasize that he and Clementine are completely out of place in these memories.

- I imagine the use of color being extremely important in depicting a memory being erased. The memory itself will be highly saturated and bright. When it is erased, the color will be drained from it, and then it will become over-exposed so that all details (especially faces) will become blurred, and finally it will fade out to white. I love the image of a grey Joel in an empty, pure white space.

- I think it is important for this color to be apparent whether the scene is a happy or sad one. Whether the memory is good or bad, it should still be more appealing than the greyness of the erased memory. In fact, a high-saturation, high-contrast scene should enhance the anger/discomfort of a scene (for example, the argument in the zoo could feature bright lighting and harsh, contrasting colors, whereas a happier scene would be softly lit). The main emphasis here is that the memory has life to it, and when it is erased it becomes sterilized and dead.

I’m eager (and a bit nervous) to watch this movie, now that I’ve created a pretty clear image in my head of how I’d expect it to look. I did google the film, and was surprised to find that Jim Carrey plays Joel. This makes me suspect that the filmmakers wanted to take the movie in a semi-comical direction just like I did. 

Oh yeah, they totally emphasized the weirdness. Awesome!