Kurosawa's Ran

[Barendd Nobeard]

And Ikiru is possibly the greatest film of all time.

Maybe, but I like Ozu's Tokyo Story even more.

 

[barsoomcore]

Maybe, but I like Ozu's Tokyo Story even more.

No question, it's another candidate for the position. Ozu seems so much more Japanese than Kurosawa -- and has always been more highly-regarded in Japan than Kurosawa. My experience in Japan was certainly that Kurosawa is not taken very seriously there.

But I wasn't talking to film critics or anything. Because they're crazy.

 

[WizarDru]

No question, it's another candidate for the position. Ozu seems so much more Japanese than Kurosawa -- and has always been more highly-regarded in Japan than Kurosawa. My experience in Japan was certainly that Kurosawa is not taken very seriously there.

But I wasn't talking to film critics or anything. Because they're crazy.

Well, if Kurosawa can be slow, Ozu is tortorous, IMHO. After all, it's one of the more famous Kurosawa quotes that involves an Ozu film and how someone opened up a book during the movie. It's more of a current conceit that he wasn't taken seriously for many years...the truth was he just got too eccentric, and between some financial troubles and personal problems, bottomed out his own career. Prior to the Tora! Tora! Tora! fiasco, most of his films had done extremely well, financially and critically. He was still something of the odd perfectionist when Ran was made (if you've ever seen the documentary, where they paint a field gold for a shot that doesn't end up in the movie, you can see what I mean).

My admittedly limited experience with some native Japanese has been the opposite, that Kurosawa was highly respected, with the acceptance that he was a flawed genius. Of course, since he only made four films from 1980 on, all of them art-house movies, it's not like he had anything like the critical or financial success prior to 1970. Ozu is definitely more "japanese" in his storytelling and style, though.