With the financial help of rich American fans Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, Akira Kurosawa was able to realize this painstakingly detailed, and beautifully story-boarded, epic about power, trust, illusion, and war in 16th century Japan. The big names may have secured the money, but this is pure Kurosawa, especially emblematic of his final decade and a half of work, with painterly canvases, static long takes, less of an emphasis on tele-photo lenses (though in the battle sequences, as he pioneered in “Seven Samurai”, they are ever present), and a humanist, melodramatic touch that at this point wasn’t as suffocating as it would be in the final films (“Madadayo”). Criterion’s Blu-ray transfer is stunning, fully realizing Kurosawa’s rich color textures.
