DERSU UZALA Movie Review

As a result of the critical and popular failure (unjustified, I think) of his 1970 fairy-tale-like portrait of slum residents, Dodes 'ka-den, the despondent Akira Kurosawa attempted suicide. The work he plunged himself into—partly as comeback, partly as therapy—was this simple tale set early in this century of a Russian explorer who encounters a wise, aging hunter along the border between Russia and Manchuria. Dersu the hunter (played with considerable charm by Maxim Munzuk) becomes a great and unexpected friend to the explorer, saving his life during a fearsome blizzard, which is just one of many memorable images in the film. Featuring a flashback structure not unlike that which John Ford used in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Kurosawa's film is, also like Ford's, a tale of unlikely heroism and secret honor in the face of a galvanic clash between nature and “civilization.” A Japanese and Soviet co-production, Dersu Uzala tries to achieve its impact through both length (nearly two-and-a-half hours) and sheer size. Though photographed in a 70mm multi-track stereo format, it was seen that way in the U.S. only at a few festival showings; its general release here was in standard 35mm. The grainy, brownish color (a sad hallmark of much Russian cinema) in the release prints certainly didn't help, but even in its original 70mm version Dersu Uzala never gels into the visionary epic of friendship and adventure that it clearly wants to be. It's a sluggish, schematic, and only fitfully moving pageant. But if it indeed provided the therapy that Kurosawa needed (it snared an Academy Award as Best Foreign Language Film), then Dersu Uzala—which was followed by the stunning Kagemusha and the brilliant Ran—may well be one of the most important (if not best) films in Kurosawa's life.

NEXT STOP … Red Beard, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Close to Eden

1975 124m/C JP RU Yuri Solomin, Maxim Munzuk; D: Akira Kurosawa; W: Akira Kurosawa, Yuri Nagibin; C:Asakazu Nakai, Yuri Gantman, Fyodor Dobronravov; M: Isaak Shvartz. Academy Awards '75: Best Foreign Film. VHS KIV