Akira Kurosawa

Kurosawa is a very revered director amazingly he even lived until he was 89! Anywho, about Kurosawa as a director and his films. The films we watched in class all had one dominant aspect to them that really caught my attention. What that aspect was, was Kurosawa's use of weather specifically as wind. In each movie, Stray Dog, Yojimbo, and Ran, each movie had their fair share or even maybe over the top of Kurosawa's wind. The wind in each movie that we saw seemed to get more intense as if a hurricane or tornado was near the vicinity of the movie sets. This element of nature that Kurosawa seemed to be so fond of gave the movies a different feel to it. It may have been more predominant in his other movies but the ones most notable with his wind feature that we saw were Yojimbo and Ran. For example, in Yojimbo throughout the entire movie every outside town scene in the morning seemed to have wind blowing here or a tumbleweed rolling around over there. Even more so in Ran once again in the outdoor scenes. Such as when the father character was running from the Jester, even though it was a very long shot you could easily see the effects of the wind blowing on the sand, dirt, and the plants. Even more noticable when there are medium or close up shots with characters outside when the wind was used so intensely that it was audible and sometimes even overlapping what the characters were saying.
By using this wind effect, Kurosawa gave the films a more realistic feel to them. It made viewers feel as though they could almost feel the wind themselves along with the feeling of actually being there and experiencing the action. In addition to the wind usage, what also complemented his wind use was the cinematography. The camera angles used in his many films really allowed for us to look from a third person point of view and this enabled viewers to get the sensation as though they were watching it in real time. However personally I saw his wind usage to be sometimes over the top, a drawback to its possible intended effect. Sometimes while watching the movie, I felt as though the wind really deviated my attention and oftentimes was too loud to hear what the characters were saying which to me gives a film most of the time its authenticity and originality. Overall though the use of wind was a good choice and when used in moderation does wonders which Kurosawa explored completely it seems.