[Rene]

gesehen am 03.10.2006 (DVD) und 19.12.2011 (Kino: JKI Köln); 4/5

An underfunded provincial hospital as a last fortress against the total doom of existential despair.

This could easily have turned out a bit oppressive given the moral burdens each and every character has to shoulder during its three hours... if not for Kurosawa`s wonderfully nuanced direction, lending each segment a distinct mood and rhythm, switching, sometimes from scene to scene, from almost abstract minimalism to expressionistic fervor to joyful submersion into the textures of the film`s world.

Among many other things, this also is a treatice on the cinematic value of faces. Yasumoto`s trajectory from arrogance to humble enlightenment might have less to do with Redbeard`s teaching than with a series of encounters with women`s faces as embodiments of the aesthetic spectacular: the pulsing veins on "the mantis"`s forehead while making love to him in murderous rage; the paleness of Onaka`s face flaming up next to the moon (with her becoming, essentially, another celestial body); and, of course, the dark, animal-like glow of poor, feverish Otoyo. Only when Kayama`s transformation is complete, his own face, too, is allowed to become an object of aesthetic adoration: when he is sick and being cared for by Otoyo, his features are being sculpted, in long, loving close-ups, into a statuesque, soft, open-hearted beauty previously hidden behind his brooding demeanor. The whole scene, long and almost completely silent, is a marvel, altenately pitting both Otoyo`s and Yasumoto`s face against different kinds of grained textures.
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"Film is like a battleground: love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word: emotion."