a Smith
18May11
I haven't watched the movie in a couple of years,and I was not impressed, but I like your point, and it makes me want to reappraise it with consideration of how some I know reacted to the event you mention.
Wall
Displaying all 16 wall posts
Rodney Welch
28Jan12
Minor Kurosawa, starring Toshiro Mifune as an aging, Lear-like businessman whose fear of impending nuclear war tears his family apart. Rather a surprising misfire; while nuclear anxiety was and remains a timely subject, this talky family drama never really taps into the full tragic potential of the subject. Strong performances by Mifune and Takashi Shimura, who played the dying man in the director's immortal "Ikiru."
Sudipto Basu
2Oct11
Kurosawa should have kept a few things un(der)stated. For the most part engrossing.
Mugino
18May11
Perhaps it was the topical nature of this film that led to its "failure" (a Kurosawa flop isn't quite the same as "Freddy Got Fingered"). Yet watching it during this time of nuclear crisis in post-tsunami Japan makes it eerily oracular and relevant nearly 60 years later. The Japanese title, "A Record of Living Beings" does a better job of encapsulating this social drama. Mifune astonishes as the elderly patriarch.
a Smith likes this
-
-
Mugino
19May11
I have to admit that if I had viewed it before the disaster, the atomic age anxiety depicted in the film may have felt thematically forced, as if amplified for the sake of drama. But there is renewed fear and awareness today and with some trying to flee the country to save their own skins, leaving the rest behind to struggle. Makes me wonder how such a film would be received if made today.
Francisco R.
10May11
Despite being a flop when it first came out, I often think this is one the most accomplished non-period dramas Kurosawa made in his career, because it avoids the cloying elements that plagued his previous and then some of his post-90's works, while at the same giving a more than justified portrait of one of the major threats lurking down Japan at the time.
VENIMOS LOS JODIMOS Y NOS FUIMOS
14Apr11
Un anciano empresario, dueño de una fabrica, se encuentra obsesionado por su terror a las plantas nucleares, por lo que decide poner a la venta sus propiedades y huir de Japón con rumbo a Brasil en compañia de sus hijos. Estos, más movidos por la ambición que por otra cosa, no solamente se rehusan sino que entablan una demanda en contra de su padre. Enmedio de su desesperación, el anciano lleva a cabo un fallido atentado en contra de su fabrica, por lo que es recluido de por vida en un manicomio, donde termina perdiendo la razón. Tras el exito de Los Siete Samurai, Kurosawa elaboró esta amarga reflexión acerca de una de sus preocupaciones ecologicas fundamentales (su temor ante un probable desastre atomico) con Toshiro Mifune como un poco disimulado alter-ego. Debido a que los recientes eventos en Hiroshima y Nagasaki permanecian muy frescos aún en la memoria colectiva del público japonés (el cual no deseaba ni siquiera pensar en ello), la pelicula fue un rotundo fracaso. Seguramente, esta no se cuenta entre sus obras más logradas, sin embargo, al dia de hoy, los tragicos acontecimientos derivados del terremoto y el tsunami que azotarón Japón, junto con las todavia impredecibles consecuencias del accidente en los reactores de la planta nuclear de Fukushima, le brindan una inesperada actualidad al film y vienen a demostrar que el cineasta no se hallaba tan errado en sus planteamientos. Seguramente, si estuviese aún vivo, Kurosawa se encontraria aterrorizado.
trolley freak
24Mar11
One of Kurosawa's least successful movies but still a major work. Excellent character performance from Mifune playing the aged patriach of an extended family (he was 35 at the time), living in fear of the Atomic bomb and trying to persuade his dependents to move with him to South America. His disintegration into madness is powerfully portrayed...
Rohit Apte
19Mar11
Mifune holding the baby in his arms, determined to protect it from any calamity that may befall it; yet the fear of death showing in his eyes, is a stunning image in cinematic history.
Josh Tierney
6Feb11
While the ending itself might not be subtle, the final shot certainly is. I also greatly enjoyed Mifune's old man makeup and costumes (and of course performance), which is really just great design work. A unique and engrossing family drama all-around -- if No Regrets for Our Youth was the failed attempt at an Ozu, I Live in Fear was the successful one.
Harry Rossi
29Dec10
I'd like to start by saying Mifune is amazing in everything he does and this is especially true here. Although the film might be a little uneven in the beginning, I must admit that it turned out to be another Kurosawa masterpiece. Its amazing how one man could create so many wonderful pieces of art.
Franklinton Underground Cinema
15Jun10
Very interesting companion with Resnais' "Hiroshima, Mon Amour", being that I inadvertently watched them back-to-back. Resnais was much more poetic, in a Malick sorta way, which is a big deal considering the awful images. Kurosawa was very straight forward, very harsh, but very empathetic. Both very claustrophobic, and at times suffocating.
The Shadows and Silence
27Mar10
A dark, harrowing and fantastically made drama which studies through one obsessive man the inner fears of the Japanese psyche regarding the atomic power that has become the driving force behind the 20th century.
Roy Baugher
27May09
With a story such as this, I can almost believe this movie could be remade today with the modern day equivalent: the threat of a small nuclear device, a "dirty bomb," being detonated.
brent
31Mar09
This is possibly Mifune's most prestigious performance. This is one in which he is completely into character to the point where one can't even distiguish the actor. The plot is so simple and yet its so expansive that there is always something new to be seen. Possibly the best of Kurosawa's postwar era.