Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Charming and brutal

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The beginning of The Idiot is surprisingly rough, apparently due to producers who hacked an hour and a half out of the original cut. Short scenes are interrupted by unhelpful expository text, and I felt immediately lost. I turned to the beginning of the wikipedia plot synopsis to try and figure out who these people were and what was going on, and that was enough to keep me going (although it's pretty spare).There were also moments where I felt Kurosawa was trying to hard, without show-off cinema moves that suggested he wanted this to be his Citizen Kane.But once the movie clicks into gear, it is incredible. By the time I got to the lengthy, incredibly intense scene at Taeko's birthday party, I was riveted.This is a very talky movie that succeeds because of some extraordinary powerful dialogue and some incredible performances. Setsuko Hara is amazing as a bitter, complex woman, and Toshiro Mifune has the presence of a caged tiger. Masayuki Mori is wonderfully fragile as the saintly, confused title character, and Chieko Higashiyama as Ayako's mother brings a wonderful humor to her role as the one other truly honest person in the film. At it's best - the birthday scenes, the exchanging of charms section, Kameda's courtship of the mercurial Ayako - it is as good as anything Kurosawa has ever made.Yes, the movie was cut to ribbons, and that's very bad, making the beginning incomprehensible and some elements, like Kameda's obsession with a knife, extremely perplexing. Yet the film is so powerful that it can sweep aside all those flaws and leave you stunned by its wonderfully Russian intensity.

This film spells drama like fireworks. Although it is already heavily edited and at times the plots seemed to be a little choppy, the intense acting performances by the main cast certainly helped to intensify the solid script adapted from a novel that i have not read.Sometimes the acting seems to be overly dramatic (hence the 'firework' effect) but it is not a bad thing as it did made the lengthy 2.5 hour film a lot more fun to watch, and perhaps it is consistent with the tone in the novel.But the greatest strength of this film still lies in all the small moments which exemplified the features that made it memorable, especially from the main character as, unlike Mifune and the female casts who relied on emotions and loud-mouthed verbal abuse to capture the essence of the characters they are portraying, his portrayal is a silent but genuinely powerful, solely relying on compassionate and impactful actions.

Japanese screenwriter, film editor, film producer and director Akira Kurosawa's ninth feature film which he edited and co-wrote with Japanese writer Eijirõ Hisaita (1889-1976), is an adaptation of a novel from 1868-1869 by 19th century Russian author and journalist Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky (1821-1881). It was shot on locations on the Island of Haikkado, the largest and northernmost prefecture of Japan and is a Japanese production which was produced by film producer Takashi Koide. It tells the story about Kinji Kameda, a soldier who due to his experiences during the Second World War has been staying at a sanatorium in Okinawa for several years. After being released, more or less recovered, the uncommonly compassionate Kinji returns to his home place and during that winter in the 1950s he meets a woman named Ayako who is the youngest of a wealthy man's three daughters and a kept woman named Taeko whom he becomes emotionally involved with. The young man is looking for a woman to spend the rest of his life with, but things change when he learns that his friend Akama is in love with one of the two women.Distinctly and precisely directed by Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998), this heartrending and profoundly humane fictional tale which is narrated from multiple viewpoints though mostly from the main character's point of view, draws an afflicting portrayal of an emotive and trusting man's return to society after serving his country and his relationship with two women. While notable for it's atmospheric rural milieu depictions, picturesque black-and-white cinematography by cinematographer Toshio Ubukata, production design by Japanese production designer and art director Takashi Matsuyama (1908-1997), the fine editing by Akira Kurosawa and use of sound, this character-driven, dialog-driven and literary love triangle about human dignity, human cruelty, social distinctions and love, depicts an in-depth and internal study of character and contains a prominent score by Japanese film score and classical composer Fumio Hayasaki (1914-1955).This somewhat melodramatic, romantic and involving psychological drama from the early 1950s which has an incomplete narrative structure due to a studio that shortened the filmmakers original cut from 265 minutes to 166 minutes, is impelled and reinforced by it's voice-over narration, at times trance-like and colorful characters, substantial character development and the fine acting performances by Japanese actor Masayuki Mori (1911-1973), Chinese-born Japanese actor Toshirõ Mifune (1920-1997) and Japanese actresses Setsuko Hara and Yoshiko Kuga. An empathic, poignantly atmospheric and epic story.

The Idiot:To me, Dostovesky's book is the Greatest story ever told. Akira Kurosawa adapted his beloved novel when he was at top of his creative prowess. Never fully-released, the film was to remain director's personal favorite for the rest of his life and his magnificent career. Even this vehemently studio-slaughtered cut, which unfortunately is the only version at hand, has retained some of the power, beauty, and, of course, humanity of the Maestro's original vision. Here is to its full recovery and restoration! 8/10