The segment of a rather short existence - about 70-80 years - inevitably ends. But Akira Kurosawa started on the wrong side. The director's two best films - "Drunken Angel" and "To Live", filmed in the middle of the last century, were more about death than life. Rhapsody in August, Kurosawa's penultimate film made in 1992, is a hymn to life in its most striking and correct manifestation.
Drunken Angel (1948)
After World War II, the former successful doctor eats out a miserable existence, exacerbating his already desperate situation by constantly suppressing alcohol prescribed for patients. His human qualities are revealed in the touching care of a gangster, a young and handsome guy who slowly but inevitably dies of tuberculosis.
The tragedy of two destinies woven together in post-war Japan tells the audience about the cruelty of the criminal world, about the lost understanding of the yakuza's honor, about fear, as well as about simple human kindness, love and genuine courage before death. There are many pictures worthy of the epithet "best film", but "Drunken Angel" cannot fight for this right. It cannot only for one reason - he is out of competition.
"Live" (1952)
Another film that could become a hymn to the unprecedented courage of the last days of extinction is "To Live". Upon learning that there is very little left, the old man decides that, in general, he has lived his life in vain. Thoughts come to him to leave something to this world. He plans to perpetuate the memory of himself in the playground, building it on the site of a neglected wasteland.
Kurosawa puts the question bluntly: the hero will have to change a lot in himself in order to achieve his goal. After all, otherwise a weak dying elderly man with a resigned character will not be able to break the inertia and arrogance of the bureaucratic structures that stood in his way. Having made construction a matter of the last days, the old man persistently collects the necessary signatures, seals and resolutions. He will no longer be stopped by the swearing of his superiors, or the smirks of his colleagues, or the threats of gangster groups. And how could it be otherwise, if there is eternity ahead.
"August Rhapsody" (1991)
After dozens of years and other wonderful films, Kurosawa makes films about life. The intertwining of simple joys and great sadness covers a gap of 45 years (by a strange coincidence, only a little less has passed since the filming of the film "To Live"). Despite the fact that it is 1991, an elderly woman who lives with her grandchildren in a modest house near the city of Nagasaki cannot forget the events of World War II, which changed the world forever. Then the American bomb caused the death of many, including her husband. Horrible memories haunt her all her life, sometimes causing fits of inappropriate behavior.
Akira Kurosawa is an event director, and here is a turning point: before August 9, instead of remembering the past, she receives an invitation to Haiti from her brother. Will there be a grand trip? Yes, if a woman manages to break away from the past to which she has been attached for so many years. The picture is rightfully recognized as Kurosawa's best film and a poignant, but at the same time ceremonial hymn to life, which the cult director performed shortly before parting.
