Watching The Idiot this week crystallized one nagging issue I’ve had with Kurosawa’s films. Much as I love the films, the one negative that keeps intruding on my complete enjoyment of them is the acting. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was I didn’t like about it, but with The Idiot it occurred to me that the characters were not acting together – they were each acting AT each other. The most obvious example of this is where Taiko (Hara) challenges Kameda to choose between her and Ayoko (Kuga). I loved watching Hara in this scene (and all the rest of the film), but I couldn’t help but feel that her character seemed to belong to a different scene, or even a completely different film.
Now I understand that AK had a particular interest and love of both theater (western and Noh) and silent films, and so loved more expressive, theatrical forms of acting, and this can look a little anachronistic and forced to modern eyes. I think we can also conclude that he deliberately instructed some characters to be more ‘theatrical’ or ‘Noh’ in various films for reasons specific to the narrative – this was sometimes very effective, in Throne of Blood as an obvious example. However, too often I find the unevenness in acting to be a distraction from the overall quality of the film. Specific examples for me where this has detracted from the overall quality of the film would be Madadayo, Ran, High and Low and, of course, The Idiot.
From my understanding of AK’s methods, he was much more inclined than his director peers to let actors express themselves, to develop their own interpretations. Certainly, Ozu and Naruse were notoriously strict on their actors, insisting on directing their every move, and we know this led to a more naturalistic, ensemble style of acting. As far as Ozu is concerned, from what I understand, many of his favourite actors (including Hara) were not considered the most skilled of actors, he preferred to use more malleable actors that he could mold to his own ends.
A related issue to this is the repeated criticism of Kurosawa that his female characters were often weak and clichéd. But as we have discussed elsewhere, this view can’t really withstand a full analysis of his films, because there are many strong, complex female characters in his films. But could this be related to a failure to direct his actresses correctly, resulting in weaker actresses not being able to fully flesh out their characters? It is noteworthy I think that his strongest female characters are either those who adopt a very formal style (usually the evil women, such as Asaji in ToB, Kaede in Ran or Kyoko Kagawa as the mad woman in Red Beard). My favourite female character in any of his films is Toya Odagiri, in Ikiru (the office girl) – I think this character is a wonderfully funny, complex and fully expressed young woman. AK seemed to imply (I can’t recall where I read this, it may have been in Richie) that this character was almost entirely invented by the actress, Kiki Odagiri. The implication of this seems to be that he would have been perfectly content to accept a very different interpretation of the role. But, in so many other films, potentially interesting female characters either tend to disappear into the background (such as Reiko in High and Low, again, Kyoko Kagawa), or be just rather uninteresting clichés, like Shino in Seven Samurai (related thought: wouldn’t Kiki Odagiri have been wonderful in that role?).
To be more specific about where I think uneven acting and characterisation let down some of his films, here are some examples that come to mind:
Madadayo: I think Tatsuo Matsumura is lovely as the Professor, but he seemed to be surrounded by some very intrusive overacting – almost all his ‘students’ lack any real character, and make up for it by intensive mugging.
Dersu Uzala: Again, while the lead actors do pretty well, I thought the minor characters, especially the Russian Soldiers at the beginning, sometimes looked like an overenthusiastic amateur dramatic society (not helped by the horrible fake beards).
The Idiot: I love watching Hara in all her movies and I think Mifune is stunningly charismatic here, but I agree with Richie that Mori as Kameda seems lost – I just can’t understand how two gorgeous women are supposed to fall madly in love with him – he is all ‘idiot’, but no ‘savant’ as the character implies he should be. And Ayako just seems like a spoilt brat, despite repeated assurances from other characters that she is really shy and sweet.
Now, I’m not suggesting that AK’s films are full of bad acting, or that there is bad acting in all the films – I think all the performances are pitch perfect in Ikiru, Yojimbo, Red Beard, and Stray Dog (although in all those films I do think that several performances are just barely on the right side of over-egged). But for me there is a constant tendency for the characters to be thrust forward, rather than allowed to slowly develop, as we would see in an Ozu or Naruse film.
I can’t help but think that this is related to AK’s desire for his films to be all- enveloping, to be stuffed with multiple layers of meaning and ambiguity, rather than the more tightly focused films of most of his best peers. Someone so filled with a passion for making great films that grab the audience is bound to be attracted to big, charismatic stars like Mifune, and also to be open to allowing those actors to express themselves, to develop their characters. But was this sometimes at the expense of coherence? It seems to me that one of the key tasks of a director is to set the emotional tone of the acting, and to ensure that each character is allowed their own space. On a simple practical level, this means preventing the more charismatic actors from dominating at the expense of others. I can’t help feeling but that AK didn’t succeed in this in several of his films.
Now I know that this is contradicted by some of the evidence – we know he coached some of his actors very intently for some of the parts, instructing them carefully how to approach the role. But I’m not well enough read on the literature to know if this is true of all his films and key roles, but the impression I get is that it wasn’t. I don’t know whether this was a deliberate part of his philosophy, that the actors should have a certain amount of free reign, or that he simply wasn’t terribly interested in some ‘types’ of characters, so was content not to push the actors too hard (unlike Ozu and Naruse, who were notoriously tough).
If you all agree with this (I’m sure many of you don’t!), I do feel this is potentially significant to how his films are interpreted. As I’ve said above, it could explain why some of his female characters seem less vivid than his male characters – quite simply, only a handful of his actresses were strong willed (or crafty) enough to compete with the likes of Mifune for screen time. But it also may lead us to very different conclusions about some of his films, if (as I’m suggesting) the specifics of some characters were nothing more than the quirks of casting, rather than real directorial choices.
any thoughts? 🙄