This is a bizarre take. Kurosawa was certainly no communist, yes, but he was not a fascist in any sense of the word. He made a film with the Soviet Union for Christ's sake! The Bad Sleep Well is a movie about the backroom squabbles of high flying CEOs and how the wealthy can get away with everything. Ikiru is about the soulless monotony of work under capitalism and modern Japan that can only be fixed by seeking out meaning through helping others. Red Beard is about the social ills of 19th century Japan and a selfish man realizing that other people have real lives that are worth caring about and caring for. High and Low is about how social deprivation and inequality can lead to societal disharmony and murder, as well as about how the rich don't give a fuck about their hired "help." The explicit plot of Seven Samurai is about a bunch of samurai who reject the strong preying on the weak and instead teach a town how to defend themselves from those that prey on them, showing that anybody can learn the ways of the samurai, even peasants. His films are existential and humanist and to see fascism in something like Seven Samurai is a confusing misuse of the term entirely.
No worries comrade! I don't think you're entirely wrong anyway since Kurosawa did make films during WWII for the Japanese government and definitely didn't make films that directly examine Japan's wartime atrocities like some other Japanese filmmakers, so there's some reaction in him yet. Definitely not a fascist though.
This is a bizarre take. Kurosawa was certainly no communist, yes, but he was not a fascist in any sense of the word. He made a film with the Soviet Union for Christ's sake! The Bad Sleep Well is a movie about the backroom squabbles of high flying CEOs and how the wealthy can get away with everything. Ikiru is about the soulless monotony of work under capitalism and modern Japan that can only be fixed by seeking out meaning through helping others. Red Beard is about the social ills of 19th century Japan and a selfish man realizing that other people have real lives that are worth caring about and caring for. High and Low is about how social deprivation and inequality can lead to societal disharmony and murder, as well as about how the rich don't give a fuck about their hired "help." The explicit plot of Seven Samurai is about a bunch of samurai who reject the strong preying on the weak and instead teach a town how to defend themselves from those that prey on them, showing that anybody can learn the ways of the samurai, even peasants. His films are existential and humanist and to see fascism in something like Seven Samurai is a confusing misuse of the term entirely.
My face is red, I stand corrected!
No worries comrade! I don't think you're entirely wrong anyway since Kurosawa did make films during WWII for the Japanese government and definitely didn't make films that directly examine Japan's wartime atrocities like some other Japanese filmmakers, so there's some reaction in him yet. Definitely not a fascist though.