Something about music and opposites and Kurosawa

When I was in high school I sang in a band. We were pretty awesome with our ukulele solos, but this one time we played a show with a band called Roshomon. Now I'm not sure how a bunch of high school students knew that word, but it was the only way I knew that word until I was in my late twenties when I kept hearing about this movie that apparently took its title from that band those kids played in at my high school.

So I finally saw the film, and it was pretty cool, but then I saw Seven Samurai, and that was some good shit. Then I saw Ikiru and I was done. DONE, I say. Who knew a movie with no gun or sword battles at all would be the one to win me over?

Anyway, I love Kurosawa. LOVE. I inhaled his autbiography. My favorite part was the beginning, where he talked about how his teachers thought he was so dumb he was nigh unteachable, and lo, he turned out to be Kurosawa. I got a lot of cool things out of that book because he is, in the end, a great writer before he is anything else, but I'm going to talk about one thing in particular that I liked.

He said he realized one day that he needed musical queues as opposites. That if a character has a fight scene, you play music that is really serious and sad. I don't know - I'm paraphrasing and there's a dog in my lap so I'm not getting up to get the book to quote from it, but I liked that bit about opposites in music.

That doesn't mean you always have to have opposites, but I like when that happens. I always wanted to have a kickass action scene play over some ABBA. That's why I was so thrilled when Community did it. Anyway, I don't know where I'm going with this but fuck it.

I love Kurosawa, is my point.

Put it in your queue: Kurosawa's Ikiru

I never went to film school, and when I started writing screenplays I never even watched anything that was made before my lifetime, so I started with a pretty weak education in film. What's beautiful about that is how I've been able to learn over the past decade things others learned in a classroom setting.

That's why, until about two years ago, I didn't even know who Kurosawa was.

I heard of Rashomon because in high school one of my classmates was in a band called Rashomon. No idea what it meant, just that they had a following. One day that film came on TCM and I decided to watch it to see what the fuss was all about.

Holy crap. Sometimes I hate to admit to liking something everybody else likes, but in this case, I was entranced. I was drawn into the story in a major way, and even though this was an old film and used techniques we now see all the time, I could see the story for what it was, and it was brilliant.

At that point I set out to see everything the man ever made. It helped that Mystery Man always went on about Kurosawa's brilliance. That dude really loved himself some Kurosawa.

Anyway, this was all to say that my favorite work of his is actually Ikiru. It's not an action film at all, but a small story about a bureaucrat who's had enough and sets out to do one great deed before he dies. The film could easily be a play; it's mostly dialogue between a few people in rooms. Very few exteriors, very little action, but powerful as hell. I defy you go watch that film and not get a little teary over one man's ability to make a difference. It's an amazing film.

I love Seven Samurai, of course, but Kurosawa's greatest strength was never in the action scenes. It was always in the characters, which is why even his action films were so strong. This film is half character sketch, which plays to the man's best talents. So if you haven't seen Ikiru, I urge you to give it a shot.