I don’t know if he ever explicitly called himself a fascist but his movies are all about samurai rescuing peasants who are too weak, stupid, and worthless to care for themselves. It’s cape shit / cowboys in medieval Japan. Ikiru is a little different though and worth a look.
his movies are all about samurai rescuing peasants who are too weak, stupid, and worthless to care for themselves
I see that you haven't watched very many Kurosawa films.
The guy was certainly influenced by fascism and its aesthetics (he grew up during its rise and got his first real directorial work during WW2), but I don't think he or his films are fascist.
Chamabara movies are about Samurai by default. In the highly class stratified and violent world of medieval Japan peasants had very little agency. That said;
7 Samurai is a meditation on how badly the military and militarism of Japan failed the common people. The Samurai explicitly acknowledge that their class are predators who cause harm to the peasants and farmers, and that the peasants are justified in killing samurai to protect themselves. Kikuchiyo is a peasant masquerading as a Samurai who launches in a an emotional indictment of the Samurai class, telling his own painful story and saying that every vice the peasants have comes not from them, but from the oppression of the Samurai. And the Samurai react to this with deep, deep shame, recognizing the truth of his words.
Ran is just Macbeth
Rashomon is a mind bending mystery movie that provided one of the best examples of "unreliable narrator" in cinema
The Hidden Fortress is the movie Star Wars cribbed it's entire plot off of.
I don’t know if he ever explicitly called himself a fascist but his movies are all about samurai rescuing peasants who are too weak, stupid, and worthless to care for themselves. It’s cape shit / cowboys in medieval Japan. Ikiru is a little different though and worth a look.
I see that you haven't watched very many Kurosawa films.
The guy was certainly influenced by fascism and its aesthetics (he grew up during its rise and got his first real directorial work during WW2), but I don't think he or his films are fascist.
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Thanks for tagging me. Good post.
Chamabara movies are about Samurai by default. In the highly class stratified and violent world of medieval Japan peasants had very little agency. That said;
7 Samurai is a meditation on how badly the military and militarism of Japan failed the common people. The Samurai explicitly acknowledge that their class are predators who cause harm to the peasants and farmers, and that the peasants are justified in killing samurai to protect themselves. Kikuchiyo is a peasant masquerading as a Samurai who launches in a an emotional indictment of the Samurai class, telling his own painful story and saying that every vice the peasants have comes not from them, but from the oppression of the Samurai. And the Samurai react to this with deep, deep shame, recognizing the truth of his words.
Ran is just Macbeth
Rashomon is a mind bending mystery movie that provided one of the best examples of "unreliable narrator" in cinema
The Hidden Fortress is the movie Star Wars cribbed it's entire plot off of.