The Idiot (1951) User Reviews

The Unbearable Heaviness of Being (Good)...

[ElMaruecan82 · 8/10 · 17 April 2019]

"To be or not to be, that's the question."

And that's the central question that encompasses many aspects of film-making. We gather that it's all about what is and what is not, what seems and what reality is, if it can be taken for granted... but that the iconic question was raised by the appearance of a spectrum speaks another truth about cinema: it's about death as much as it's about life.

It's about death in the sense that we're watching a present that is no more and the older a film gets, the fuller of ghosts the screen is. It's also about death because fiction isn't reality in the first place. We learn about life through a ghostly present called fiction, or a living death in motion, that's the first truth. And like life, "The Idiot" opens with a scream, a seminal scream tracing the invisible frontier between life and death. It's upon that screaming truth that "The Idiot" opens in an overcrowded train where passengers are sleeping.

Kameda (Masayuki Mori) shares with Akama (Toshiro Mifune) the nightmare he just had, a dream-like flashback of the execution from which he barely escaped. After that episode where he literally saw the ghost of death coming to seize him, he made a tacit pact with destiny: anything carrying life would be instantly precious, from the dog he threw stones at as a kid to any human being, everyone was worthy of his goodness. But because of the shell shock and the war-trauma, Kameda spent time in an asylum, and his dementia was translated into an uglier word: idiot, a verbal leitmotif with the same resonance as 'stupid' in "Forrest Gump".

Kurosawa adapted Dostoyevsky's famous novel changing its Imperial Russian setting to post-war Japan. He was perhaps one of his biggest fans, considering him the most truthful author when it came to paint humanity. And indeed, you can see another truth in Kameda's behavior: he's a good person, not candid or naïve, but good because he learned to fear death, it's the awareness of his mortality that forged his goodness. Goodness is at the core of being human, because what defines our condition is death and what should define it is being good. This good/dead duality turns Makeda into a zombie-figure, a ghost sleepwalking among humans.

Normal people are too stubbornly attached to life to realize that they miss its very point. And it's only until they look at themselves through Kameda's eyes, played with quiet intensity by Mori that they're too disarmed to toy with feelings. I never really liked staring at people in the eyes because I found it like obscenely undressing them. And it's true that the titular idiot while not doing anything except reading, speaking or being present, allow these people to unmask their real selves. In a way, he is like a living metaphor of the camera, the threshold between the living and the seeming, a trigger to people's honesty.

I mentioned Forrest Gump, but the idiot can be also compared to Peter Sellers in "Being There" where his candidness was mistaken for profundity. In the case of Kameda, there is a genuine perceptiveness in his eyes, capable to see beyond the barriers of reputation or social bearings, but that capability backfires at him because you just can't idealize everyone without hurting some. Kurosawa's movies have always been about people who could 'look' but being a passive observer was only one step before action, there was no meaningless look. In "The Idiot", looking is active by essence and meaningful by necessity, not just for the observer.

Indeed, it all starts with Akama showing a picture of Taeko (Setsuko Hara) a woman he's literally buying from a "benefactor" who's literally auctioning her, Kayama played by the baby-faced Minoru Chiaki is also interested to buy her for a lesser dowry. When Kameda sees the picture of Taeko, it's not just love but truth at first sight, he can't see the whole thing, until a birthday party where he reveals with a sharp candor the amount of humanity he can read in Taeko, connecting it to the same fearful look he saw in a man who was executed. Taeko is so fascinated by the man she asks him if she should marry Kayama.

Later in the film, the triangular love has evolved, the rivalry isn't between Akama and Makeda but between Taeko and Ayako (Yoshiko Kuga) the daughter of Kameda's host played by Takashi Shimura. The two women love the same man, a situation that is likely to have two collateral damages and speaks another truth about life: the intentions no matter how good they are carry inevitable bad effects and vice versa. And Makeda's ambiguous relationship with Akama (Mifune has rarely been as intense... and sexy) reminds of their previous confrontation in "Rashomon", two men with two versions of the same story, each one living in his own fantasy or dream-like vision of life, each one driven mad because of truth.

Dreams or alternate realities are often present in Kurosawa's oeuvre, maybe to better preserve us from the painful truth as if goodness was too unbearable. The film is set in a cold wintery town, covered by snow, where people are too struck by coldness to act naturally, or during a carnival or a fancy reception where everyone plays a role and only one person stays the same, the man without a personality, a persona, a mask. He's the man who affect personalities, allowing them to transcend their condition, encouraging a woman with a reputation to emancipate herself, a crook to apologize and the weakly Mayaka to renounce money.

Every scene is staged with an opposition between passive liveliness and active inertia, reminding of that transcendent power of the camera, a frontier between life and death, dream and reality. The film speaks so many truths (a word I used a lot) maybe at the risk of being overlong, but it carries an irresistible poetry of its own.

265-minute version

[lsaul-2 · 7/10 · 20 July 2004]

jonr-3 from Kansas City wonders if the 265-minute version will ever be released.

The answer is a definitive NO because every frame of unreleased footage no longer exists anywhere in any form.

It's a shame, because the film -- fascinating and electrifying as it is in its present form -- would probably have been one of the greatest examples of intertextual cinema of all time had it survived!

One can easily imagine what we're missing simply by examining the way that the initial scene on the train plays out as Mori explains his dream about nearly being executed to Mifune -- and then we are presented with a jarringly disturbing cut to a long intertitle, which basically seems to explain what was cut out by the studio execs [as do the many intertitles which follow]...

Kurosawa's hero-worship of Doestoevsky may be compared to his similar adoration of Gorky and his play "The Lower Depths" -- which is faithfully adapted in the 1957 filmic version -- and although it is much shorter than the tale told by The Idiot {sorry, couldn't resist!}, this reverence in no way makes the film boring or inferior. Just compare it to the 1936 Renoir version (which is quite good in many ways in its own right) to see how this faithfulness pays off...

Read the Doesty and then watch the film and fill in the blanks yourself. Kurosawa's filmic blueprint provides plenty of clues to how the missing footage might have been incorporated into this extremely underseen masterpiece.

Kurosawa's Slashed Passion Project Is An Adaptation of an Already-Controversial Novel

[topitimo-829-270459 · 8/10 · 3 October 2019]

Dostoevsky was director Kurosawa Akira's favorite author. According to Kurosawa, nobody could depict humanity better. Therefore Hakuchi (The Idiot, 1951) was a passion project for Kurosawa, which he executed as a four-hour magnum opus. As you might guess, movie studios are rarely interested in these sorts of passion projects...

The Idiot was Kurosawa's first film for Shochiku after Scandal (1950). When he delivered his four-hour cut, the studio decided "nope", and edited a 100 minute (!) version out of it. Kurosawa was furious, and didn't make another film for the studio for 40 years. During the filming of Hachi-gatsu no rapusodi (Rhapsody in August, 1991), the director tried to locate a full cut from the studio archives, but the four-hour cut is apparently lost forever. Thankfully what remains for us later audiences, is not the 100 minute briefing by Shochiku, but an edit that lasts almost three hours. As always, it's difficult to say what an extra hour could have added to the narrative. But one thing is sure. At least you would not need to read intertitles in a sound film!

I recently read the Dostoevsky novel and watched a Soviet film adaptation by director Ivan Pyrev (1958). Perhaps Pyrev had witnessed Kurosawa's infamous 100 minute cut, and thereafter decided to not be an "idiot" himself, and to instead do the film in parts. Pyrev's adaptation only tells book one, and he never got to make a sequel for it. I thought his film was okay. As for the book, it wasn't among my favorite things by Dostoevsky, whom I usually adore. I would recommend Kurosawa's film for anyone who happened to like the novel. If you haven't read it, you are going to be a little confused. Imagine how confused the Japanese audiences must have been upon witnessing the 100 minute cut...

Kurosawa's film is interesting, because it differs from anything else that he directed. Partly this comes in the form of negative things. Both the source material and the editing-history make this an unusually unsure film for Kurosawa. The novel doesn't have much actually happening, which is very unlike your typical Kurosawa narratives, that are straight-forward.

Yet the best things in this adaptation are really great. Kurosawa's black and white depiction of winter in Sapporo is stunningly beautiful and helps to capture the emotional coldness of the narrative. The casting is also mostly excellent, once you get used to the fact that General Epanchin's wife is now the grandmother from Tokyo Story (1953). Hara Setsuko has been cast against type as the femme fatale, and this insane contrast serves to keep the film constantly interesting when she is onscreen. Hara is a movie star on the same level with Greta Garbo, and offers magnificent close-ups throughout the film. Mifune's rough temper is also perfect for the role of Rogozhin, and he does great job. Kuga Yoshiko also gives a good performance.

The only one, about whom I have reservations, is Mori Masayuki as the lead character, Prince Myshkin in the novel. In all his versatility, Mori is one of my favorite actors from Japan, but in this version the lead character has been written to be too undetermined. Myshkin as a character is kind, but also verbally talented, and therefore the way Kurosawa has directed Mori to look at everything like a confused puppy didn't really work for me.

Because I am not a great fan of the novel, it is difficult for me to say, what should have been added to make this a better film. It is clear that the first meeting of Mifune and Mori in the beginning has been drastically edited, and other introductions, too, seem to have been cut, making the film more confusing. It is interesting to wonder, if Shochiku had allowed Kurosawa to release the four-hour cut, had he done the film AFTER Shichinin no samurai (Seven Samurai, 1954)...

Beguiled

[crossbow0106 · 1 October 2011]

Before watching this film, I read the 700 page novel. Obviously, Mr. Kurosawa had to omit characters and even chapters, but he has made a coherent, wonderful and even a little disturbing film about obsession. Kameda (Masayuli Mori) is given a reprieve from being shot by the Americans in Okinawa post war (a good context to begin this film, the book is set in Russia in the 1850's) and goes to relatives in Hokkaido. He sees a portrait of Taeko Nasu (Ms. Hara) and is just struck by it. He meets her and though she was about to give her answer to one man regarding marriage, she asks Kameda, a veritable stranger whom she feels knows her, to make the decision and he says no. She runs off with Akama (Mr. Mifune) and Kameda follows. Also in the mix is the young, very pretty Ayako (Yoshiko Kuga), who may instead be be throed to Kameda. The choices have to be made, but bear in mind Kameda is still beguiled by Taeko. The acting, with many actors you've seen before or since in films of the period from Japan, are all uniformly good, but no one holds a torch to Setsuko Hara's Taeko. Her role is all about expressions and emotions, and she is absolutely perfect. You see her anguish, her foreboding, her sarcasm in every scene. The beautiful Ms. Hara is just amazing in this role, as she was in so many others. If you are ambitious, read the book first and you'll see what a great job Mr. Kurosawa did in adapting and directing this film. Without reading the book, I don't think you'll like it as much but it will definitely hold your interest. Lastly, the term "The Idiot" is more about Kameda having fits (somewhat like epilepsy), not being weak of mind. One of Kurosawa's best, Setsuko Hara is phenomenal and it is an excellent adaptation to the classic novel.

Taeko's Laughter

[frankgaipa · 6/10 · 11 April 2005]

My first and only previous viewing of Hakuchi came while our local yet world famous Pacific Film Archive was relatively new. I'd been working my way through George Sadoul's Dictionary of Film, naively fantasizing catching everything in it, checking off items I did manage to see, and lucking into complete (or nearly) retrospectives of a number of directors including Renoir, Ray, Mizoguchi, and Kurosawa. The Idiot may have been for me as a reader the most special of the translated Russians and Sadoul's running-time entry for Hakuchi -- "265 mins. (original version); 166 minutes (general release version)" – broke my heart. In the years since, though I haven't actively looked, I've encountered no clue as to the content of the destroyed footage, no hint as to whether anything at all, even memory or hearsay, may remain. Can there be anyone still living who saw the full version? Are there accounts in untranslated Japanese film literature?

The film as it stands strikes me as Kurosawa's most imperfectly realized. Whether he or someone else did the criminal reedit, it begins with disparate scenes linked by narrative intertitles. These intrusions so closely resemble the apologetic substitutions for unrecoverable scenes in recent film restorations that I imagine they represent the cuts. Background and setup seem the most obvious place to have cut. The explosive scene around the fireplace and wad of money, now just bizarre, unsupported, seems precisely where an airhead producer might have begun the film. As the film nears its end, scenes flow into one another with increasing ease. But, really, who knows? What have we lost, if even those delicate later convolutions suffered the knife? Donald Richie, in The Films of Akira Kurosawa, nods at the controversy over the film's length and Kurosawa's failed defense, yet whines about the early intertitles as if they were part of the original design.

Despite all that, the casting of Setsuko Hara as Taeko (Nastasya Filippovna) makes me wonder if the film was doomed anyway. Her beauty, as least in this film, is a cold thing. I recall Nastasya as a flighty, sometimes generous woman able, with varying success, to hide her feelings behind good-natured laughter. Men's verbal ploys and attacks often ratcheted upward her gaiety. As much as beauty, unpredictability drew men to her. We -- I mean men -- both desire and fear beauty, and we both desire and fear women's unpredictability. Taeko's so deliberate nearly always that there's too little explanation left in the film for the other two men's entrancement with her, and too little for Myshkin's. She's so dark and so darkly clothed, almost as if in mourning, so sedate, so prone to miming each thought before she speaks it that she appears fifteen years older than her rival Ayako. No small part of The Idiot is the spontaneity of Nastasya, the irony with which the fight over her turns a fluid creature into an achingly deliberative one. Taeko's silence should resound while the two men mourn her. It doesn't because she never lived anyway in Hakuchi. Did cut scenes destroy Taeko's mirth, imbue in its place this haggard wisdom? Did somebody cut Taeko's laughter?

Fragmentary masterpiece

[kerpan · 10/10 · 22 May 2003]

Currently clocking in at a mere 2.75 hours -- following the lopping off of 100 minutes from Kurosawa's (unreleased) original version -- this barely scratches the surface of the plot of Dostoevsky's tremendous novel. Kurosawa modernizes the story and moves it from Russia in summer to Hokkaido in winter. The great Russian director Grigori Kozintsev thought this film captured the spirit of the novel remarkably well -- and who am I to disagree. I seriously wonder whether someone unfamiliar with the novel could follow this film, in its currently disjointed state -- but for those who know and love Dostoevsky's story (and characters), this film is a delight and a revelation. By and large, the actors do a remarkable job of capturing the essence of Dostoevsky's cast. I simply cannot imagine a more suitable Rogozhin (Akama in the film) than Toshiro Mifune -- especially when watching him "merely" standing in the background looking like a bomb ready to explode. Next most convincing was Chieko Higashiyama as Satoko, Ayako's mother not Takeko's as IMDB incorrectly records (Elizaveta Prokofyevna Yepanchin in the novel). This "Edith Bunker as Russian noblewoman" character has always been one of my favorite Dostoevsky creations -- and CH gets every aspect of the character right. Setsuko Hara as Taeko (Natalia Fillipovna) and Yoshiko Kuga as Ayako (Aglaya Ivanovna) are wonderful, as is Takashi Shimura as Ono, Ayako's father (General Yepanchin). Masayuki Mori as Kameda (Prince Myshkin, the eponymous hero of the tale) is hard to assess -- as the "idiot" role is hard to envision. I am not certain that he is the perfect Myshkin, but he is certainly a touching one.

Interlinked with the extraordinarily fine acting, is Kurosawa's tremendous direction here (or what's left of it). I recently also saw an otherwise fine Russian version of "Crime and Punishment", which failed to capture the richness of tone of the novel, missing every trace of any sort of humor (an essential element of the book). Kurosawa, on the other hand, managed to ricochet from melodrama to humor to tragedy without missing a beat -- sometimes within the bounds of a single shot. Frankly, I never would have thought this possible. Another interesting facet of the direction here -- this often looked more like a silent film from the 20s or 30s than a film of the 50s.

Interesting Dostoevsky Translation

[RodReels-2 · 7/10 · 29 September 2000]

This is a rather meandering tale which is hard to follow without a familiarity with the Dostoevsky novel. Armed with some understanding of the novel, this becomes an interesting translation. It's amazing to watch Kurosawa take its Russian roots and transfer it to Japanese culture. All in all, it's far from being one of his best. But like almost all of his work, it has moments which are fascinating. I would recommend it only to someone who is familiar with the novel or is trying to plow their way through it.

Dark, Disturbing, Haunting and Beautiful

[yippeiokiyay · 10/10 · 16 January 2006]

One of Kurosawa's least-seen films is "The Idiot". The film is set in Hokkaido, the northernmost area of Japan. Deep snow covers the earth, and is shoveled into barriers, seeps in through the ruins of a warehouse in great drifts, piles up against the windows in crescents, howls fiercely as Toshiro Mifune's character and Matsayuki Mori's "Prince Myishkin" step foot off a train into a blizzard.

Dostoevsky's great novel is the resource material.The Prince Myishkin character is Christ-like in the novel, and, as transplanted to Japan may be seen as a Boddhisatva-like character (an Avalokiteshvara or Kanon-a saint of compassion). Matsayuki Mori does an amazing job of portraying a damaged but compassionate soul..one that feels deeply the pain of those he encounters, and who speaks the truth simply, with a pure heart and an awareness of suffering. In one scene, he holds Toshiro Mifune's face between his small, gentle hands, and there is such a tender sensibility, his hands seem to communicate love and absorb the pain of Mifune's character. It is a breathtaking moment.

Toshiro Mifune is brilliantly cast as the thuggish suitor who vies with Mori for the soul of the beautiful and doomed Taeko Nasu character played with uncharacteristic drama by Setsuko Hara.

This complex, rich, layered, frightening, deeply disturbing film has been under-appreciated from the outset-beginning with the studio, which cut the film drastically (Kurosawa was outraged! *see trivia). Japanese audiences didn't understand or like the film, and other audiences have found it weird. Some of this relates directly to Donald Richie's seminal work on Kurosawa and his conclusion that "The Idiot" was a failure. Unfortunately, Richie's conclusion seems to have put replaced the nails in "The Idiot's" coffin with screws. It's very hard to pry open the film.

Sure, it is a weird film...that's what is so interesting. Kurosawa has made one of the most powerfully strange films, while stretching the range of his actors (have you ever imagined you would see Setsuko Hara like this? She's terrifying in her desperation and pain!) giving the scenes a grounded reality, and allowing us to enter into the lives of these tragic, doomed souls.

This is one of the finest films of world cinema, although one of the least-viewed.

If only we had the full cut

[Jeremy_Urquhart · 6/10 · 9 January 2023]

What a shame that the edited version of this is the only one that exists. 166 minutes might sound like a long film, but apparently the original cut for this was almost four and a half hours long, and while such an epic would be a challenging sit, I'd imagine it would have made for a stronger film.

There are some inter-titles used to explain parts of the plot that otherwise get brushed over really quickly, and some weird moments when it comes to pacing, with things happening a little too abruptly and awkwardly throughout the second half.

The acting is fantastic from the four leads (not that Toshiro Mifune isn't great, but it's unusual to see him get out-acted in a movie, and I think it arguably happens here), and it holds up visually, seeing as Kurosawa's basically incapable of directing a bad movie.

But it's still not a great movie because of those edits and the pacing; if a full cut ever resurfaced by some miracle (hey, it happened to Metropolis 80 years after release), I would watch it in a heartbeat.

A beautiful series of set pieces

[gkbazalo · 9/10 · 1 May 2002]

Masayuki Mori, the slain husband from Roshomon, is fantastic as Kameda, a pure and simple, yet insightful, man who remains mentally frail after recovering from a breakdown. The film chronicles his relationships with two very different women, both in love with him, and with the volatile and violent Akama, a perfect part for Toshiro Mifune. Prior to reading the novel, I found the plot disjointed and difficult to follow. I think this film is best appreciated as a series of set pieces. The interaction among the players in each scene is completely absorbing as Kameda, through his passivity and selflessness, elicits a whole range of emotions from the rest of the cast. Minoru Chiaki, the woodchopper samurai from Seven Samurai, has a small but absolutely riveting role.

The 2003 Russian miniseries by Vladimire Bortko, at nearly 10 hours, captures far more of Dostoyevski's novel than does this film. However, somehow, Kurosawa has been able to capture the essence of the novel. It's a shame that over an hour was cut from the film and is now lost.

Setsuko Hara is tremendous as the "Natassya" character from the novel and Chieko Higashiyama as the "Lizaveta" character. Both are regulars from Ozu films but its unusual to find them together in Kurosawa.

If you have read the novel, you won't have any trouble following the story, even though it has been transposed from czarist Russia to Post-WW II Japan. If you don't know the story, just enjoy the incredible acting and direction of Kurosawa.

For what it is and for Setsuko Hara

[eigaeye · 6/10 · 8 October 2014]

Comparisons between the original book and this film version are rather pointless, not least because the surviving version of the film is half the length of Kurosawa's original. One assumes that the use of bridging text and voice overlay early in the (released) film are there to substitute for action now edited out, anyway the story-lines of the book and the film deviate considerably.

At more than two hours, the film still seems long to me, so I sympathize with the studio. But the main problem for me is the uneven casting. Masayuki Mori, as "the idiot", and Toshiro Mifune, as his rival in love for the courtesan, are unconvincing in their roles. Their scenes together are the weakest and tend to drag.

On the other hand, Setsuko Hara as Taeko (the character corresponding to Dostoevsky's "Princess") and Yoshiko Kuga, as Ayako, her rival for the attentions of the "the idiot", are both exceptionally good. Their one scene together--a great clash of wills towards the end of the film--is riveting.

The other star of this film is Hokkaido in mid-winter. Kurosawa must have commanded great loyalty (or just commanded) from his cast and crew, as there are many scenes shot outdoors in near blizzard conditions.

I rate this 6.5. I do not feel that Kurosawa really has command of his material, even if only half of it made it to commercial release.

The imposed edit of this movie makes it impossible to rate.

[shoikan · 9/10 · 14 May 2005]

Although severely mutilated, this film still distillates the genius of Kurosawa, unfortunately the artistic decisions are still made by the people who have the money, not by the people who have the talent.

For the people who have read Dostoievski's "The Idiot", I think this film will be an amazing experience. For the rest the movie probably won't be very clear, because the studio edited off over an hour of footage, which obviously crippled the movie.

That was the luck which Kurosawa's "The Idiot" ran. And many of other films too.

Regards

Fascinating at times, though at the end a bit too much

[Andy-296 · 7/10 · 8 April 2015]

In 1951 Akira Kurosawa followed up his critical and commercial breakthrough Rashomon (especially outside Japan, where it become the first widely released Japanese film) with this strange adaptation of Dostoyevsky's famous novel (Kurosawa would return to form the next year with the widely acclaimed Ikiru).

Masayuki Mori is the Idiot, who wants to do so much good to the world that he looks like an imbecile to most people. Toshiro Mifune is Akama (Rogozhin in the novel), showing a weird scowl during most of the movie. The entirely black clad femme fatale Taeko (Nastasya Filippovna in the original Dostoyevsky novel) is the object of their rivalry, and is played here by the legendary Japanese actress Setsuko Hara, still alive as of 2015, in a completely different register from the characters she played in the films of Yasujiro Ozu.

Kurosawa originally made a 265 minutes (more than six hours!) film, and that version was shown to a preview audience, which reacted negatively to it. The studio then cut the running time to three hours, and Kurosawa more or less disowned the movie. It is believed that the original version no longer exists. Despite the cuts and studio interference, it is a fascinating, if completely anti naturalistic film. The movie looks like a mess, surely due to the studio cuts, but, with its melodramatic moments and ultra weird performances, is mostly a fascinating, enjoyable, if sometimes confusing mess.

However, at three hours the movie is a bit too much (apparently it was shown in two parts of roughly an hour and a half). Watching a six hour movie of this is unimaginable to me.

Set in Northern Japan after World War II (though the setting is really atemporal, as we see little of cars or other technologies of the time). The wintry Hokkaido locations are a plus.

Difficult but worth seeing

[jonr-3 · 5/10 · 26 April 2004]

I wonder if the original 265-minute version (see "trivia") will ever be released on DVD? It seems to me that out of respect for Mr. Kurosawa, arguably the greatest filmmaker who's ever lived, it should be done if at all possible. If only I were a billionaire...

I found the film very difficult to follow, probably in part because of the extensive cutting (which is obvious in a few places), but also because, to my shame, I've never read the Dostoevski novel, though I started on it many years ago.

But the film is worth watching, despite the considerable difficulties it may pose, if only for the extraordinary--I won't say acting, but perhaps PRESENCE will do--of Toshiro Mifune, and the very fine acting by virtually all the other cast members. And of course for the magnificent visual compositions by this unsurpassable master of film, Akira Kurosawa.

And perhaps most important: for the moral tone of the film. I reverence Kurosawa not only for his amazing skill, but above all for his moral preoccupation. Without being preachy, in film after film he reminds us of the things that are really important in our lives and in our relationships with others. Very few filmmakers seem, especially nowadays, to care about that. I believe Kurosawa was a master not only of film but of life itself.

Poignant film that unfortunately suffers from heavy cutting in the first half

[tomgillespie2002 · 11 April 2012]

It's pretty difficult to judge this film fully. The first half is erratic, and filled with jolting edits, characters that appear and disappear without any introduction. It's a damn shame. The scatological nature of this epic project, adapted from the Russian classic by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, was due to it being horrendously cut down by the studio that funded it. Originally, Akira Kurosawa had created a 266 minute cut of the - incredibly faithful to the source novel - was shortened by 100 minutes. Unfortunately, it would seem that the world may never see the original version, as even when Kurosawa hunted for the missing scenes in the vaults several decades later, he was unable to locate them.

As it is in its now 166 minute format (the longest version available), it is still an incredibly important piece of melodrama. After the devastation of the war, Kinji Kameda (Masayuki Mori) and Denkichi Akama (Toshiro Mifune), travel back to a remote island. Kameda claims that he suffers from an illness, cause by the suffering of war, and simply referred to as idiocy - when expressed on film, this idiocy seems simply to be an innocent, and fundamentally naive view of people. He simply only sees good in people, even if this is not the case. On arriving they both seem to fall for a disgraced woman, Taeko Nasu (Setsuko Hara), who was someones concubine since the age of fourteen, and is being offered for marriage at a price.

What ensues is a strange love triangle that divides not only the two male protagonists, but the community. The film is beautifully shot in black and white by Toshio Ubukata, who had worked with Kurosawa on his previous film, Scandal (1950). It is unfortunate that the films first half suffers so evidently due to extensive cutting. However, it is the relationship between Kameda and Akama that provides the climax (which is seemingly more intact) that provides the films central theme, and its most poignant elements.

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Less than the sum of its parts

[goldgreen · 7/10 · 28 March 2016]

Described as 'the most overlooked Kurosawa film', this statement should be taken at face value, not with the romantic idea it is unfairly overlooked. There is much that is brilliant here, but overall it is lesser and not greater than the sum of its parts. There are many brilliant scenes, where the film's many warring personalities are skilfully juxtaposed in individual frames; any aspiring film director would do well do study this. The ice skating scene from the ice festival where skaters wear ghoul masks is something Fellini appears to have lifted for the carnival scene in I Vitelloni. Also in one of her best ever roles (better than Tokyo Story), Satusko Hara is fantastic as the scorned ex-concubine who is in turns melancholy at her situation and vengeful. The Wicked Witch of the East from the Wizard of Oz was surely an inspiration here. Most at fault is the role of Masayuki Mori as the idiot Kameda, his long silences, lack of gesticulation and slowly spoken lines only serve to kill the viewer's attention. We never get to feel much sympathy with his infirmity; perhaps his best bits were cut by the studio from the four hour version that Kurosawa created? There is no resolution or epiphany as in the end to Ikiru. Plus Toshiro Mifune's character is basically little different to the unruly warrior from The Seven Samurai, where it really belongs. This is worth watching for some of its parts, but this is not and has never been a successful film. My personal favourites from Kurosawa are Stray Dog, Seven Samurai and Ikiru.

best of Japanese film

[Tashtago · 10/10 · 12 June 2005]

I've seen several Kurosawa films but this one is far and above his best. The samurai films all tend to have a unusual amount of over-acting but this modern drama based on Dostoyesky has the same fine natural acting that Ozu has. (the other great film director of the 50s and 60s Japan ) In fact the emotional intensity of this film is almost unbearable as it seems to go from one gut wrenching sequence to the next. Setsuko Hara gives perhaps her greatest performance, certainly it is more layered and has more dimension than most of the work she did with Ozu. In fact this film seems to be Kurosawa's version of "Tokyo Story" utilizing the same low intimate camera angles as that film. The story of a modern day Christlike figure will certainly have the viewer compelled to check their own spirituality and religious believes . A great movie and perhaps the greatest adaptation of a novelist as it perfectly re-creates the claustrophobic brilliance of a Dostoyevsky novel too bad Kurosawa never tackled the "Brother's Karamazov."

Russian Literature Comes to Japan

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 21 June 2016]

A Japanese veteran, driven partially mad from the war, travels to the snowy island of Kameda where he soon enters a love triangle with his best friend and a disgraced woman.

Akira Kurosawa has said, "Of all my films, people wrote to me most about this one. I had wanted to make The Idiot long before Rashomon. Since I was little I've liked Russian literature, but I find that I like Dostoevsky the best and had long thought that this book would make a wonderful film. He is still my favorite author, and he is the one — I still think — who writes most honestly about human existence." First of all, for Kurosawa fans, it is a shame the full, uncut version of this film is lost. You might think that three hours is already a long movie (and you would be right), but apparently the original cut was more in the realm of five hours. Considering in retrospect that Kurosawa may be the greatest Japanese director of all time (it is him or Ozu), any footage would be valuable...

For me, what I really like is the use of Dostoevsky. Surely the author never thought his book would be used in a Japanese film, with a Japanese setting, but he never would have expected a film at all. Like Kurosawa, Dostoevsky is possibly my favorite author. He has a way of capturing the psychology of man and putting it on paper in a way no one else ever has. I'm not sure if this is what Kurosawa means about "human existence" (I think not), but we clearly agree on solid source material.

some of the best Dostoyevsky adapted to film...

[Quinoa1984 · 8/10 · 14 February 2008]

For any adaptation of a Fyodor Dostoyevsky story to work, the filmmaker has got to know what he's in for with the source. Dostoyevsky writes like the sky is falling in every beat, but it's such a breathtaking sky that there needs to be some poetry in the midst of all the torpedoes falling down on consciousness. Getting through Crime and Punishment or Notes From the Underground is hard going at times, but about the most rewarding, if you give yourself to the prose, that literature can provide. I haven't read the Idiot yet, but I can gather just from what I've read about it- and hitherto seen in this Akira Kurosawa adaptation- that it's not a whole lot set apart from his other works. The difference in this case is that there's a more "wholesome" Dostoyevsky character here than, say, Roskolnikov. With a bit of Forrest Gump, a squeeze of Jesus, but a lot more head trauma, Prince Mishkin (here Kinji Kameda) sees the best in people, the love, but also the sadness and pain, and he can't do much but offer some advice and those eyes full of whatever the other person wants to project onto themselves from him.

One thing I found really interesting in the Idiot is Kurosawa's use of eyes. Eyes give away a lot sometimes in movies, but in this case they convey almost as much as in a straight silent film. Odd, considering how much Kurosawa sticks to the program of Dostoyevsky's original text (not sure how much it stays true to it, especially translating to 20th century Japan, but it seems close by the tone and depth of the language), that body language and the perspective of eye contact and movement and range is so important. But it's this facet that creates at times the benchmark of the emotion in some scenes, specifically one that takes place late in the film where there's the start of an emotional confrontation between Takeo Nasu and Ayako, the two women of Kameda and Akama's lives, and before a word is spoken in this tense scene where sides are chosen and fates are laid out, eyes go back and forth- Nasu's wild, hurt eyes, and Akayo's more direct, composed orbs. Under any other direction it might go into overacting, but with Kurosawa it's just right.

So much has already been written about the problems of the Idiot stemming from the fact that a third of its original running time- from 265 to 166 minutes- detracts from how it really should be perceived. I couldn't agree more, but it should be noted that the picture, when it does work well on the usual fronts of Kurosawa at his prime (and it is often), does have some triumphant status to it. For a movie that, however long length, is filled with this much talk going through motions that should be considered torrid melodrama and to actually surprise one with the effects from its actors and its lucid storytelling, is thrilling. The cast is terrific, everyone from Toshiro Mifune in a role that has him as a kind of "human" time-bomb, where he could go off any minute, but there's a lot of moments where he suddenly comes down to Earth thanks to Kameda; Satsuko Hara, whom we might remember from Rashomon, doesn't stray too far from her character's range, which allows her to plunge head-on into a role that's dark and depressing and strange; and Mori (also in Rashomon and noteworthy in Ugetsu) has a nice quality all around him as the one "innocent" soul of the bunch ("innocent" as in not totally corrupted in his emotions or swayed easily by his passions one way or another).

And, as mentioned, Kurosawa's camera is limitless in how it can navigate around during a scene, quietly, sneaking up and getting a good strong composition with everyone in frame a certain way or spinning around to another one, that keeps you on your toes to expect something else. It's suffice to say, at least, his skills don't dull in this time in his career between Rashomon, Ikiru and Seven Samurai. So, really, it all comes down to The Idiot being a piece of a great movie, or pieces to put it that way. It's frustrating, for example, to actually KNOW where the producer cut into the frames, added in a cheap wipe or two- ones that would not be the norm for Kurosawa- and put in those irritating cards early on in the film rushing things along (it also doesn't make sense, for that matter, that the film's first part is 90 minutes while the second is 14 minutes shorter than that equivalent). Like Magnificent Ambersons, Kurosawa got the rough end of the stick on distribution, if to say that he went "too far" in making a 4-hour plus Dostoyevsky adaptation for Japanese audiences in 1951. Unlike Welles, who was an upstart at the comparative time, Kurosawa was just starting out, getting some hits but not quite a superstar in international cinema yet.

It's a bit of a shame, because taking in all of the sappy melodrama and the high-rising music and the occasional maudlin touches, The Idiot, in its completed form, could be as great a Kurosawa at his very best. As it is, it's only better than average- but should be a welcome treat for Dostoyevsky fans at least.

Some great moments, but uneven

[gbill-74877 · 7/10 · 7 October 2018]

Out of loyalty to both Kurosawa and Dostoevsky I feel guilty for not giving this a slightly higher rating, because I revere both of them. The film is worth watching and has some great moments, but it's uneven and lags, falling a little short of greatness.

The title character is a man who was saved from execution at the last moment and suffers from epilepsy, like Dostoevsky himself. Perhaps in a fantasy projection of Dostoevsky's then, and certainly as an embodiment of Christ's virtues, 'the idiot' (Kameda in the film, played by Masayuki Mori) has seen eternity in that moment, and knows how insignificant all of our earthly cares and passions are. He knows that the only important things are kindness and empathy. There is a lovely scene early on when he describes that critical moment to Ayako (Yoshiko Kuga), the daughter of a family relation:

Kameda: "Everyone in the world suddenly seemed so dear to me." Ayako: "Everyone in the world?" Kameda: "Each and every person I'd ever known. Everyone I'd ever passed in the street. And not just people - the puppy I'd thrown a rock at as a child. Why hadn't I been kinder?" Ayako: "To the puppy?" Kameda: "No, everyone! I told myself that if I were spared, I would be kinder and more considerate to everyone."

Kameda seems so different from others in his childlike simplicity, and in how he breaks down life's conventions in order to understand people and make an authentic, heartfelt connection to them. Those who come into contact with him feel truly 'seen', accepted, and not judged. He's detached from the world's practicalities and yet has pure empathy with his fellow creatures, which is true wisdom, and a higher spiritual state.

The first hour of the film was its strongest, but due to the editing done near the beginning, replacing scenes with textual descriptions and dropping names rather rapidly, it can be disorienting for the viewer. The story is really not that complicated, so bear with it, or if you can, 'pause' and figure things out. Part of the issue may be in the similarity in the beginning of names (Kameda/Kayama, Akama/Ayako, Taeko/Takako).

Early on we have Kayama (Minoru Chiaki) being put forth as a possible husband to Taeko (Setsuko Hara) in order to 'make a respectable woman out of her' (after all, she's been the mistress of her rich uncle since she was 14, and thus 'used goods'...ugh) There are multiple complications to this scheme, Kayama's family (and sister Takako in particular) questions her morality, another man named Akama (Toshiro Mifune) loves her, and Kayama himself is in love with his boss's daughter Ayako. On top of all that, enter Kameda, who immediately makes a connection with Taeko, looking into her soul, seeing her pain and her inner goodness, despite what others think. Soon it will be a simpler love triangle, but one that's a little different than most - Akama loves her sensually, but Kameda loves her purely spiritually. She feels tugged between the two, but worries that she'll "ruin the life of an innocent child" if she ends up with Kameda.

Setsuko Hara has fantastic presence in this film, and I thought Kurosawa really brought out her inner fire. The icy stares she exchanges with her prospective sister-in-law early on are filled with tension. She conveys defensive haughtiness, vulnerability, and anger very well. To her uncle, the man who has been her predator turned 'lover', she says "I'm no longer your 14-year-old mistress," and that simple line is like a ton of bricks. In telling her story to Kameda, with an entire room full of people listening, she says "He'd do lewd and shameful things to me and then leave," and we can imagine and understand the damage he's done. Finally meeting someone who empathizes with her, treating her with dignity and kindness, she says "I hoped and prayed, imaging someone like you. Hoping that a good, honest, kind man would appear." They are powerful moments. Hara is excellent in all of her scenes, and I wish there could have been more of them.

Where the film begins bogging down a bit is the development of a second love triangle, this time between Ayako, Kayama, and again, Kameda. Ayako is also drawn to Kameda's spirituality, and thus becomes a rival to Taeko, even as Taeko swings back and forth between Kameda and Akama. This is one area where the film should have been tightened up, because some of these scenes are too long, and frankly lacking when Hara is not on the screen. Masayuki Mori's performance as Kameda is not the best - he certainly portrays the internalization of another's pain, and we see it all over his face, but he lacks warmth, and beatific wisdom.

There are some wonderful scenes in the snow throughout the film, most notably in an ice skating scene during a festival, with skaters carrying torches and wearing masks. It's as if the snow and harsh climate, with houses buried and Kameda practically having to go underground to visit Akama, is a symbol of men's souls, cold and buried. And, just as Kameda is "saved" spiritually by his near-death experience, which causes him to re-evaluate his entire outlook on life and to be kind and angelic to all of those around him, he's saved again by a physical manifestation of this transformation - an epileptic fit - just as Akama tries to murder him.

Unfortunately the film is marred with clumsy cuts, side-swipes, and other edits likely due to the studio hacking the original film down to a more palatable length. Say what you want about that, but there are real issues with pace even in the finished product. Perhaps that's because the wrong things were excised, e.g. Ippolit, the atheist/nihilist in the novel who also interacts with Myshkin, would have provided a separate dimension from the two love triangles. It may also be due to the film suffering, as others adaptations do, because it's very difficult to include the observations an author makes in addition to giving us characters and a plot. In this case, it's Dostoevsky no less, and in what was a very personal novel to him, and we don't see his commentary on life, death, man's nature, religion, happiness, loneliness, capital punishment, the impact we can have on other's lives, etc. All or most of that is lost. The pacing that holds together in a sprawling novel (and arguably just barely) does not work as well in film form, and so a literal translation is risky, even though Kurosawa's intentions were good.

If only we could all love as he did.

[lastliberal · 8/10 · 4 March 2009]

Not having read the novel, I am not encumber by the fact that 100 minutes of this film was left on the cutting room floor. I am a Kurosawa fan and love Toshirô Mifune, so I approach the film from that angle.

The setting on a Japanese mountaintop fits right in with the fact it is based on a Russian novel. It was so cold that I had to put a coat on to watch it.

Kameda (Masayuki Mori) arrives in town after being released from a mental institution. He is "The Idiot," a simple man who is so Christ-like in his manner that people are put off guard. he runs into Akama (Toshirô Mifune), a rich man who has come back to claim his sweetheart, who has been a mistress to another wealthy man since she was 14. Both Kameda and Akama are in love with Taeko (Setsuko Hara), who is promised to a third man. This makes for a fascinating story as the men joust for position, with Taeko playing everyone against each other.

There are many other characters that float in and out of this drama, and it makes for some interesting and funny dialog. As mush as I like Kurosawa's samurai epics, his dramas are even better.

In the end, there were two idiots.

Suffers from its Source Material

[VikingBurialService · 6/10 · 9 October 2022]

My least favorite Kurosawa movie so far. Basically, Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot", but a movie. I was never a fan of the book, and was hoping that the movie would help it come to life in a way it didn't on the page. Unfortunately, even though the acting is good, the imagery just isn't Kurosawa's best. The snowy outdoor scenes are good, but a lot of the interior shots feel dull compared to his other movies. The biggest problem is the plot, which is more of a book problem than a movie problem. This adaptation is fairly faithful, which means it devolves into a weak-willed main character being part of a soap-opera love quadrangle. Just like in the book, Kinji (the movie's 'idiot') is likable at first, but his inability to speak strongly on one side or another makes him less relatable as time goes on. It just makes for a movie where I don't relate to the main character; a nail in a story-coffin.

Intense, brilliant, and flawed

[cherold · 9/10 · 11 May 2017]

The beginning of The Idiot is surprisingly rough, apparently due to producers who hacked an hour and a half out of the original cut. Short scenes are interrupted by unhelpful expository text, and I felt immediately lost. I turned to the beginning of the wikipedia plot synopsis to try and figure out who these people were and what was going on, and that was enough to keep me going (although it's pretty spare).

There were also moments where I felt Kurosawa was trying to hard, without show-off cinema moves that suggested he wanted this to be his Citizen Kane.

But once the movie clicks into gear, it is incredible. By the time I got to the lengthy, incredibly intense scene at Taeko's birthday party, I was riveted.

This is a very talky movie that succeeds because of some extraordinary powerful dialogue and some incredible performances. Setsuko Hara is amazing as a bitter, complex woman, and Toshiro Mifune has the presence of a caged tiger. Masayuki Mori is wonderfully fragile as the saintly, confused title character, and Chieko Higashiyama as Ayako's mother brings a wonderful humor to her role as the one other truly honest person in the film.

At it's best - the birthday scenes, the exchanging of charms section, Kameda's courtship of the mercurial Ayako - it is as good as anything Kurosawa has ever made.

Yes, the movie was cut to ribbons, and that's very bad, making the beginning incomprehensible and some elements, like Kameda's obsession with a knife, extremely perplexing. Yet the film is so powerful that it can sweep aside all those flaws and leave you stunned by its wonderfully Russian intensity.

A good adaptation of a questionable literary experiment

[davidmvining · 7/10 · 24 March 2022]

Akira Kurosawa followed up his international success of Rashomon by going serious literary adaptation with an adaptation of Dostoevsky's The Idiot. Transposing the action from Tsarist Russia to postwar Japan (including the first explicit mention of the US occupation in a Kurosawa film), Kurosawa set out to make a two-part, over four-hour long film that the studio, Shochiku, suddenly got cold feet about releasing at such length. Given the ultimatum of cutting the film down to less than three hours, he decided to cut it "lengthwise", pulling 80-minutes from the film and bringing it down to 166-minutes. The opening seems to suffer most from these cuts, but scenes often feel unnaturally cut up to bring down the running time, getting us from the beginning of the story to the end mostly intact.

The story follows Kinji Kameda (Masayuki Mori), a former prisoner of war who was convicted of war crimes by the US occupational force and sentenced to death but relieved of his sentence at the last moment, the stress of which broke him, disassociating him from his former self and turning him into a simpleton, the titular idiot. On his train back to his home town of Sapporo, he meets Denkichi Akama (Toshiro Mifune), the final son of an old and wealthy Sapporo family. Kameda disarms the normally angry and impulsive Akama with his simplicity. They descend the train and come across the picture of Taeko Nasu (Setsuko Hara) in a photography studio's window. She's the mistress of a wealthy man who has decided to give her away with a 600,000 yen dowry to another man. Kameda goes to the house of his cousin Ono (Takashi Shimura) who has defrauded Kameda of his 125-acre farm and is also the father of the attractive and strong-willed Ayako (Yoshiko Kuga). They host Mutsuo Kayama (Minoru Chiaki) who is the one offered the money to marry Taeko who also has a previous relationship with Ayako.

If there's a section of this film that outright suffers from the cuts it's the first 12 minutes or so. We get very discordant jump cuts from one scene to the next, walls of text to outline who is what, and even voiceover. It's honestly hard to watch. This section has been cut down to ribbons, and it's incomprehensible. However, by the end of it, when Kayama gives Kameda a letter to give to Ayako, things begin to feel more natural. This relationship between Ayako and Kayama never really gets explained or fleshed out (I presume it was a large victim in the cuts), but it gets the pieces moving, in particular Kameda's innocence and Kayama's reticence about taking the offer to marry Taeko.

The highlight of the film is Taeko's birthday party. Parts of this got cut out here and there, particularly near the beginning and the end, but the meat of it is simply amazing. It's probably the single greatest sequence in Kurosawa's entire body of work, and it's mostly just people talking. Kameda isn't the only one with some level of concern about the match between him and Taeko. Taeko herself feels trapped, and it takes the simple innocence of Kameda to look through her reputation as a kept woman to see the pain she feels underneath. He recalls the story of his near execution, brought on by his recognition of how Taeko's eyes remind him of the eyes of a man he saw executed, eyes that had said to him at the time that the 20-year-old had been suffering alone for so long. This meeting of souls is wildly compelling and visually sophisticated with Kurosawa using the full three dimensions of the frame to create interesting compositions without feeling repetitive in ways that William Wyler did so frequently in films like The Little Foxes. It gets cut short about the time Akama shows up with 1,000,000 yen to offer Kayama for Taeko, but Taeko refuses them both and decides to run away with Kameda. This is the sort of long, intricate scene that feels very at home in Russian literature, and Kurosawa makes it wildly compelling in the context of Japanese film.

Then it feels like there's a whole section missing because we get a quick dialogue driven recap of the next few months where Taeko left Kameda to go with Akama, stuff that feels like it would have been filmed (I could be wrong). This second half of the film ends up handsome (the visual sophistication never diminishes, the acting is never less than very good, and the individual scenes are never less than interesting), but it seems to simply recapture some of the base issues with the original novel (I have since started reading the novel and am only about a fifth of the way through it). Kameda is ultimately not that interesting of a character. He's a simpleton with little in the way of agency other than a near passive desire to be good and help people, but he doesn't seem to actually drive anything. He becomes a pawn between Taeko, Akama, and Ayako.

Taeko won't marry Akama until Kameda is happily married, and she chooses to manipulate Ayako into marrying the simple Kameda, a prospect she's not entirely against because she admires his simple form of love. The idea is that Taeko loves Kameda but cannot be with him because their being together would ruin him. At the same time, the relationship between Taeko and Akama is really toxic to the point where Akama beat her "black and blue" one night. Everything comes together around the Sapporo Ice Festival (the whole movie is filmed in winter, a marked contrast to the tangible sweltering heat of Stray Dog). Akama and Kameda end up playing second fiddle to the rivalry between Taeko and Ayako, a rivalry born from Ayako's negative opinion of Taeko in general and the fact that Kameda seems to love them both.

Kameda's love is a completely selfless one to the point where he has no concerns for his own wellbeing. He only wishes to make both women happy, caught between them and willing to do what each of them demand of him. When Taeko jealously and maliciously demands that Kameda leave Ayako in front of her, Kameda does it, ruining everything. And this scene is kind of the centrality of my issues with how the story plays out. Because Kameda is so simple and borderline passive, merely going wherever he's led, the film's tragedy never feels like his. The tragedy is both Taeko's and Ayako's, unable to simply accept happiness where they can find it, in Kameda himself. Dostoevsky and Kurosawa had created an ideal of a man, a passive, weak, and pure man who wants nothing for himself, and because he wants nothing for himself he ends up kind of an uninteresting central character. I can see how Dostoevsky would later go on to say that he admired the intent of his book but not the execution (I've been meaning to read the original novel for a while, and I think this viewing of the adaptation is going to spur that to actually happen).

That being said, despite my issues with the narrative completion, there's still a lot to recommend in the film. Even though the movie is mostly just people talking in rooms, it's often visually sophisticated and interesting with amazing depth of field and composition. Performances are generally great, especially Mifune as a secondary character, Hara as a pained, spurned, conflicted, and vengeful woman, and Kuga as the younger but equally strong-willed contrast to Hara's more mature character. This probably would have been a stronger film, especially in the beginning, in the longer form, but the basic passiveness of the central character can only be overcome so far. Still, that birthday party scene is amazingly compelling and really, honestly, one of the best single sequences Kurosawa ever put to film.

"Trading charms"

[Steffi_P · 4/10 · 23 November 2010]

Books are not like movies, but they have more similarities than at first meets the eye. Just as a novelist can focus us entirely on one object or one person, a film director can use the close-up for the same effect. Alternatively a director can use a long shot to describe a setting, or select angles to give us one characters point of view, all of which brings cinema closer to the novel than it does to a stage play, which cannot give us such controlled focus. And just as a good novel will make careful use of language to give tone or atmosphere, a good film will do the same with lighting, sound design, cutting and so forth. Probably the biggest difference however is one of overall structure. Whereas books are designed to be picked up and put down, digested over a period of time, a motion picture is supposed to be enjoyed in a single sitting, and as such must tell its story in a smooth and succinct manner. This is where Akira Kurosawa fell down in his ambitious line-for-line adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Idiot.

Considered one scene at a time, the style in which The Idiot is filmed demonstrates how the shots and scenes of cinema can work like the sentences and paragraphs of a novel. Kurosawa uses a plain, direct approach, close to the action, with few props or elaborate backgrounds to distract from the people – just as Dostoevsky's words focus us on people and what they do rather than bothering with elaborate descriptions of places. He makes a lot of use of intensely emotional close-ups, just as a sentence or two in a book might be devoted entirely to depicting someone's reaction, without distracting us with whatever else may be going on in the room. What little business there is going on apart from the actors is generally minimalist and for purposes of mood, for example a light sprinkling of snow around Masayuki Mori as he looks at Setsuko Hara's picture, or the eerie chimes at the Akama residence.

It wasn't often during their period working together that Kurosawa would not cast Toshiro Mifune in the lead role. He would only cast someone else when it was really necessary, and this is one such case. It's hard to imagine the brash Mifune as the titular idiot, whereas Masayuki Mori is perfectly meek, doing everything with an acute look of sensitivity. The only trouble with Mori is that he isn't credible enough, and is little more than a caricature of self-effacing timidity. Female lead Setsuko Hara was a big star in Japan and will be familiar to Yasujiro Ozu fans. However I find her a little hammy here, and some of those grimaces she pulls look absurd. Mifune himself plays a supporting role, and although he plays quite a wild and exaggerated character, he does at least give the part an entertaining intensity. The other supporting roles are not bad either, with some calm and mannered turns from Takashi Shimura and Chieko Higashiyama.

While individual bits of Hakuchi may come close to the spirit of Dostoevsky's original, the problem lies in the bigger picture. Because Kurosawa's original literal adaptation of every portion of the novel ran for over four hours, it's clear some truncation was needed. However this is a process that should have begun while the movie was still in pre-production. As it is whole chunks of narrative have been removed, sometimes replaced by text, other times with inexplicable jump cuts. Rather than cutting down the number of sequences, the editing job seems to have pared each sequence down to its highlights. The picture is so stop-start, the neat flow of Kurosawa's images is spoiled. We don't really feel we get to know characters, and while the plot just about makes sense it seems incredibly fragile and disjointed. It's not that an abridged form of a novel is unacceptable for a motion picture, just that it has to be done in a way in which it still has continuity and meaning. Instead, this looks like a half-finished project, and yet at 166 minutes it is still long enough to be wearingly tedious. Ironically, the 265 minute full cut, while certainly being a bit of a strain on the old buttocks, would probably have moved far faster.