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Film Still

Rhapsody in August

Hachi-gatsu no kyôshikyoku

Japan

1991

98 Min
Color
1.85:1
Japanese
  • Currently 3.6/5 Stars.
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DIR Akira Kurosawa

EXEC Toru Okuyama

PROD Hisao Kurosawa

SCR Akira Kurosawa, Kiyoko Murata, Ishirô Honda

DP Takao Saitô, Shôji Ueda

CAST Sachiko Murase, Hisashi Igawa, Narumi Kayashima, Tomoko Otakara, Mitsunori Isaki, Toshie Negishi, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Chôichirô Kawarazaki, Mieko Suzuki, Richard Gere

ED Akira Kurosawa

PROD DES Yoshirô Muraki

MUSIC Shinichiro Ikebe

SOUND Kenichi Benitani

Cannes (Out of Competition)

Synopsis

The story reflects on the economic wars between the United States and Japan and the aftermath of the bombing of Nagasaki, by focusing on three generations of two related families: an American family of pineapple growers in Hawaii and a Japanese family living outside Nagasaki. –Inbaseline

Director

Original

Akira Kurosawa

The son of an army officer, Kurosawa studied art before gravitating to film as a means of supporting himself. He served seven years as an assistant to director Kajiro Yamamoto before he began his own directorial career with Sanshiro Sugata (1943), a film about the 19th century struggle for supremacy between adherents of judo and jujitsu that so impressed the military government, he was prevailed upon to make a sequel (Sanshiro Sugata Part Two). Following the end of World War II, Kurosawa’s career gathered speed with a series of films that cut across all genres, from crime thrillers to period dramas. Among the latter, his Rashomon (1951) became the first postwar Japanese film to find wide favor with Western audiences. It was Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (1954), however, that made the largest impact of any of his movies outside of Japan. Although heavily cut for its original release, this three-hour-plus medieval action drama, shot with painstaking… read more

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Displaying 4 of 5 wall posts.

Anthony

25Oct11

A pretty good later film of Kurosawa's that is a beautiful but sad story of the gap between generations in relation to war. While the ending could've used work, Richard Gere does good and Kurosawa's usual great direction sidestep that.

Picture of Francisco R.

Francisco R.

20Jun11

I would pair this film along with his 1955 feature "I Live In Fear" as one of his most personally outspoken but beautifully lyrical works about his major subject in the contemporary dramas he made. Also, I had no idea Richard Gere was that fluent in japanese.

Diego Gatto

5Apr11

O único filme que eu já ouvi falar sobre o gênero. Quando alguns japoneses recebem a visita de parentes que moram nos EUA e são donos de uma plantação de abacaxis no Hawaii, os mais jovens da família sucitam questões éticas sobre a segunda guerra mundial, a bomba atômica e a dificuldade em se esquecer o passado e perdoar o inimigo. Brilhante, obra de um gênio!

Picture of Tobin.

Tobin.

26Aug10

It's an average film with a few moments of greatness. The scene with the two burnt trees, the scene with the twisted playground wreakage, both are pretty wonderful. However, I think Kurosawa made a couple weird aesthetic decisions that hurt the film. The music in the final sequence, for example, ruined what is otherwise a beautiful finale.

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