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Movie Akira Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala
2020.08.27 08:23
I would like to share Akira Kurosawa's movie: Dersu Uzula which is now with English subtitles.
My nephew-in-law, Prof. Josef Kyburz, a linguistic specialist, kindly shared it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R13e2ZrU8Vc with me- see the following letter in regard to;
Nous en avons parlé des tas de fois. Le voici sur YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R13e2ZrU8Vc Pour Yujie, il y a même des sous-titres chinois ! Hello to the Reston family! You will recognize a face from a blood relation, from far back in the Korean racial history... Have fun! Papa Josef.
Since everyone knows Akira Kurosawa, I have no reason to explain on his movie like Rashomon and Seven Samurai, etc but this Dersu Uzula is the first time I saw so that I would like to add/quote some comments on this movie as following;
Kurosawa made the acquaintance of Desu Uzala thirty years earlier when he read Vladimir Arseniev’s account of charting the Russian-Manchurian border in the earlier part of this century.
There, the Russian soldier and explorer had met Dersu, the Siberian hunter, a man of the tundra. Just as the author had been attracted to this to an instinctive and natural man, so the film director was impressed by Dersu’s living in accord with nature, undistracted by the works of man. Thus, when Kurosawa was approached by Mosfilm to make a film in the Soviet Union, he already had his subject.
Indeed, Dersu Uzala is practically a Kurosawa character. Like Sanshiro Sugata, he is untutored in urban ways but possesses a natural native intelligence; like Sanjuro, he contains a practical and hardy stoicism; he is reserved, simple, direct, like Kahei the priest; like both Dr. Red Beard and the Professor in Madadayo, he knows what is right; and resembling the old man at the conclusion of Dreams, he stands alone as the natural world he so loves disappears.
Also, like so many of Kurosawa’s heroes, Dersu Uzala is sacrificed. Resembling the stoic sword master Kyuzo in Seven Samurai, felled by a shot from that new invention the rifle, Dersu, instinctive man of the steppes, is done in by civilization.
In Kurosawa’s original script, Dersu suffers further changes, somewhat resembling those of Kanji Watanabe in Ikiru. The Siberian hunter not only has (like Kurosawa during this period) trouble with his eyes, he also becomes aware of his unavoidable death and is, like Watanabe, almost unmanned by it.
In a powerful unfilmed sequence, Dersu and Arseniev find the corpse of a Chinese, the eyes of which crows have pecked away. The Russian says, under this scene: “In looking at this lonely corpse, Dersu was seeing the face of his own future, alone, helpless on the steppes. He had looked into the face of his own death and knew terror. Thereafter, he wrapped himself more tightly in his habitual silence.”
In rewriting, Kurosawa removed this and many darker scenes, considerably lightening his film. Critic Peter B. High, who has compared the two scripts, believes that Kurosawa wrote the first version during his despair over the financial failure of Dodes’Ka-den and the personal failure of Tora! Tora! Tora!, for which he was fired by Twentieth Century Fox. These two events perhaps prompted Kurosawa’s suicide attempt, during the course of which he learned much about the true nature of death.
Thus, the argument continues, when the director was again able to make a film, and one—thanks to Mosfilm’s generosity—free of any financial considerations, he no longer felt the despair which had perhaps motivated the first version of the script. At the same time he did not, through his hero, wish to revisit those scenes from which he himself had been so recently delivered.
Whatever the reason, the finished film differs from the original script. In the former, Dersu dies through the machinations of progress, not—as in the latter—through the existential fact of having been born at all and being thus doomed to death.
These changes are all in the second part of the film. The first retains much of the original script, including the picturing of the elementals that had originally attracted Kurosawa to the story: the amazing shots of the Siberian tiger; the astonishing scene of the two men gazing at both the rising sun and setting moon, all in the same 70 mm shot; and the superb sequence of the blizzard by the frozen lake.
One of the most beautifully composed and photographed of Kurosawa’s films, Dersu Uzala visually illustrates its theme—in Arseniev’s words: “Man is too small to face the vastness of nature.” The camera is always at eye level: It is through the human eye that the vastness of the steppes is viewed, and it is the human figure, small in this elemental landscape, that one remembers after having seen the film.
This is one of the last appearances in Kurosawa of humanism which so illuminates his films. Later pictures (Kagemusha, Ran) would end with vast panoramas of death undignified by hope. Dersu Uzala is one of the final and most persuasive statements of a major thesis in the director’s films: the fact of courage in the face of death.
Enjoy it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R13e2ZrU8Vc
BB Lee
Comment 9
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Yes, you can, Steve!
As I posted, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R13e2ZrU8Vc will deliver this movie with English subtitle.
BB
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Nature and civilization struggled. At the end of the day, nature ruled.
Dersu probably had a simple cataract. It was the fatal blow to him. I was
thinking the vast beautiful territory could have been part of Korea while
watching the movie. Thank you, Dr. Lee. Two and a half hours well spent.
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Glad you were able to open https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R13e2ZrU8Vc to watch this movie with no problem, Dr. Ohn - apparently Steve seemed to have some difficulty-. Yes, it could have been a part of Korea along the Ussuri River as the picture has shown. Indeed, Dersu who is a Japanese but certainly looks like Korean as my nephew- he is a Swiss-French origin, now retired, world-renowned linguist specialized in Japanese/Chinese/Korean language serving as President of Franco-Japanese Cultural Institute- pointed out. Who knows!
Anyhow, I was so impressed with such vast Siberian nature and the man/hunter who knows how to appreciate this very true nature, only Akira Kurosawa could deliver it as a piece of art!
Honestly, I am still silly to remain reluctant to spend hours watching the movie as a waste, ignoring how to enjoy the movies through these many years but Kurosawa has been an exception to shake my poor soul to make me feel hapless. Every scenery he taped is simply a piece of art, to me.
BB Lee
P.S. This Corona Virus Crisis changed my life long habit to reject the spending nights to watch movies, to make my wife so sad. But now I spend two-plus hours three times a week along the weekend when Rachel Maddow is not available, watching George Simeons' detective story series of "Bruno Cremer's Maigret" - it comes as a full set for 56 episodes- and also Andrea Camilleri's 'Il commissario Montalbano' played by Luca Zingaretti, alternatively. I didn't know what I was missing!!!
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Indeed, I strongly recommend BOTH, Jules Maigret, and also Salvo Montalbano, series of detective stories with such stark differences between French and Italian approach, not only the sceneries but also the characters of the crimes. Even the title/background melodies are so different. So different that it is hard to compare both but worthy to repeat watching both to learn some short-expression in Italian as well as French though the Italian language in Commissario Montalbano series is Sicilian so that ordinary (Northern) Italians seem to have a difficulty to understand I was told- my wife happens to be an opera buff so that she still takes the Italian class at the community college and also private lessons to keep up with Italian language but apparently she has such difficulty to understand their conversation-.
BB Lee
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Amur River
Read more : http://www.geologypage.com/2014/05/amur-river.html#ixzz6WRa77qbr
Follow us: @geologypage on Twitter | geologypage on Facebook*Captain Vladimir Arsenyer lived in Khabarovsk. It is at the junction of Amur and Ussuri River.
You can find Khanka Lake if you follow Ussuri River southward. I am not sure, but I think Dersuand Captain got into trouble there because of high wind and cold weather.
The Ussuri River is bordering China and Maritime Province of Siberia(연해주).
https://steemit.com/kr/@sanha88/4s2sff
북간도관리사 이범윤
사실 우리측 논리도 애매한 구석이 있었다. 국경을 우리가 주장하는 토문강 (북쪽으로 흘러 송화강으로 들어가는)으로 정할라치면 거의 함경도의 몇 배나 되는 땅이 (심지어 연해주까지!) 조선 땅이 되는 셈이었는데 이건 좀 무리였던 것이다. 이중하 역시 두 번째 회담에서는 국경선을 두만강의 지류인 홍토수로 주장한다. 청나라는 이마저 받아들이지 않으려 했고 이중하는 강단있게 맞선다. 까짓거 안되면 내 목을 가져가라고! 를 부르짖으면서.
*만리장성 안쪽이 불안하면 만주벌판의 주인이 모호해진다. 고구려의
영토였던 만주벌판을 회복할 기회였다. 원나라 말기에 고려의 최영장군은
요동정벌을 획책했다. 이성계의 위화도 회군이 이 역사적인 시도에 초를 쳤다.
청나라 말기에 청은 잘 차려놓은 밥상이었다. 만약 조선이 강한 나라였다면
간도와 연해주 쯤이야 식은 죽 먹기였을 것이다. 오늘 날 한민족의 비극은
조선 500년에 그 원인이 있다. 원죄라는 말외에 달리 표현할 길이 없다.
청이 망할 무렵 접경에 있는 조선 대신에 러시아와 일본이 만주를 놓고 대결 했다.
1860년, 제2차 아편전쟁에서 프랑스, 영국과 청나라를 중재 해서 북경 협정을 끌어 낸
러시아는 연해주를 청으로 부터 얻어냈다. 1895년 청일전쟁에서 승리하여 일본이 얻어
낸 만주의 이권을 삼국간섭으로 러시아가 채 갔다. 만주철도 건설권과 요동반도 항구
조차권을 차지하여 소원이던 부동항을 확보했다. 그 후 조선에서 일본보다 우세한
영향권을 행사 하더니 일본과 전쟁을 벌렸다. 영화에서 첫번째 expedition 이 1902년
이었으니까 2년후에 일본과 러시아가 전쟁을하여 일본이 조선과 만주를 차지 했다.
1945년8월에 러시아(쏘련)는 몽고, 만주와 38이북 조선을 점령 했다. 한국이 강한
나라였다면? 한국은 항상 노리고 있어야 한다. 만리장성 안쪽이 약해 질 때를.
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On my screen, the same link shows Spanish translation instead of English.
Strange... It may be from my computer setting.
However, the English version shows clear English within my comment. Why?
Please never mind. I will find the right version of the movie somewhere.
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Hmmmmmmmmmmm!
I just made a double check on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R13e2ZrU8Vc and it comes right out with English subtitle!
Tyr again!
BB
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If anyone who enjoyed Dersu enough, I would be happy to share such famous 'Ikiru', many consider THE best of Kurosawa's.
Since many share the same views, too painful to watch, I did not post it- too big/6 GB to post- but will be happy to link to its access per request through bblee38@comcast.net. Its story is about the man in the terminal stage of stomach cancer who tried to spend the last 6 months remained! Indeed too painful to watch without tears!
All the best,
BB Lee
Cinema Modeoff Dersu Uzala (1975) - The storm and the reeds (Eng-Sub)
An intense scene from my favorite movie. youtube.com4 years ago
This is a short segment of the movie in English subtitle.
I could not find the whole length movie in English so far.
Please look for it if you can.
It appears to be very interesting movie. WM