Toshiro Mifune gives his last collaboration with Kurosawa in this over 3 hour drama that I just watched..for possibly the first time? I was really into the samurai shit. Having started with Seven Samurai I got into Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, Ran, etc... Eventually I saw Ikiru and High and Low, The Bad Sleep Well, and Rhapsody in August. I think I read the description for this and was like...eeeeehhhhhh...
Toshiro plays Red Beard in a tiny role, he is a veteran doctor at a free clinic, a shady and honor-less hospital somewhere. A training intern, played by Yozo Kayama, comes to meet with Red Beard, but instead gets roped into helping at the clinic. He is against it, he feels it is beneath him. But as he meets the patients and then wrapped into a situation with a 12 year old girl they get from a whore-house.
There's a couple cut aways into people's stories that are really cutting edge, there's also bizarre digs into cultural Japanese lifestyle. It's very visionary in those segments, and had perhaps some of the darkest visionary stuff Kurosawa ever did. It also has perhaps the only nudity in any of his films. The film somehow doesn't feel disjointed though. It just feels progressive and/or groundbreaking. My feeling while watching this was constantly: fuck, this is great!
The plot is relatively bare, and while there are some side stories with the patients at the free clinic and their health, we mostly just watch small interactions, and the film is soaked in humanity. It's trademark Japanese and trademark Kurosawa in that way. Some might for sure say sparse and slow, but I would question both of those judgements. It's minimalism, and a character study. It's emotionality cannot be denied. It's a small role for Mifune but he exudes charisma and a character which is both detailed and simultaneously does just about nothing in the film. Several times his morals are brought into question, because while he might blackmail a politician, he is giving that money to help bury a recently fallen poverty stricken citizen at the clinic.
I'd say this is a great film, one which I should've guessed I'd love. I give it a 4.5
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