Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa?s ?Hidden Fortress? (1958) ? a duel episode between two generals. Only one of the generals is fighting to kill ? the other one is using the fight not in order to kill or wound or humiliate the opponent but to cure him from the militancy complex (from believing that combat is a way to settle human problems). The duel is the biggest episode in ?Hidden Fortress? because Kurosawa is staging the fight with a lot of psychological information about what fighters feel and think during the fight. Kurosawa transforms the psychology of the fighter we see analyzed inside the psychology of the fight into the psychology of a peaceful conflict negotiation, and elaborates a concept how to use military force for anti-war purposes. See the article ?Akira Kurosawa?s Instructions to Heads of States? and the analysis of screen shots from ?Hidden Fortress? (posted on Sept. 5, 2009) at: http://www.actingoutpolitics.com/ By Victor

Sanjuro is not a film about sword play and is not a samurai drama (all of this is surface structure). It is a film about the fatal danger democratic societies face today: the danger of being overthrown by the right wing political powers. In "SANJURO" Kurosawa provides penetrating psychological analysis of right wing-conservative politicians using many Western analogies. Kurosawa dedicates special attention to the analysis of the psychological condition of young people who unfortunately can be easy target of conservative propaganda. From Sanjuro, the main character of the film we can learn a lot about the values alternative to the dominant orientation on power, wealth and war. See analysis of 22 shots from "SANJURO" and an article: "Homeless Guru as a Role Model" at: www.actingoutpolitics.com http://www.actingoutpolitics.com/ By Victor

http://braidedthreads.blogspot.com/2008/09/ran.html - They don't make movies like this anymore. Well, they try to, but it is hard to imagine a movie production like this one ever coming our way again. If only the big-budget pixelated, battle-worn films churned out in the last decade or so could contain even a little of the spirit that brims in this film.