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.

Spirited Away

Spirited away was quite the interesting movie having being the first movie of Miyazaki that I had ever seen. Although I had seen it before, it was many a years ago so watching it again was almost a completely different view for me. A movie about nightmares and the dreams where we get taken so far away. Having the feeling as though we're all alone with no guidance or supervision, pretty freaky. The movie is based on a 10 yr old girl that is immersed into a completely new environment with unfamiliar sights, people, and surroundings. Eventually the story moves on to how the family go into a tunnel and find a ghost town and this is where the main story begins. Miyazaki once again demonstrates his creativity in this movie by the weird things he comes up with. Parents that become pigs, working in a bath house with a spider like boss, and the importance of memory. In addition to that, Miyazaki's typical character change is once again present in this film. Like in Princess Mononoke how Mononoke changes from having a complete hatred towards humans, by the end of the film she is although not completely changed, but at least her hatred is lessened and she's more accepting of humans and their existence. In this movie, Chihiru or Sen once she begins to work as the bathhouse, we see her change from the negative, spoiled, bratty attitude change into a courageous, honest, and very brave person. She works in the bath place slaving for a stink god and for a 10 year old, that's quite the feat. She has to take care of the son of Yubaba which owns the bathhouse she's working at even though the kid is a greedy obnoxious baby. All these changes are something that Miyazaki tends to put into his films. A change of character creating a change of feel for that character. We see something different in the character(s) instead of their first impression on us and we come not to judge them right away anymore and look for what they're going towards or running after.

Along with the type of character development that Miyazaki employs in his films, there's also once again his imagination that we can see is very apparant in the movie. In Spirited Away, there are these interestingly strange, supernatural, and even bizzare things that Chihiru encounters and deals with. The interesting thing about this is that some of them actually look like old japanese relics of mythology that I have seen in videos, documentaries, and things of that sort. Even then, the creatures in this movie are pretty unique. Like the floating mask faced (pretty big face) ghost that becomes friends with Chihiru, the river god dragon, rolling heads that the baby turned into. It seems as though even in the movie, Miyazaki has really brought about transformation of characters to be a fairly predominant level. Chihiru experiencing the life of Sen, which was to her a nightmare she never would have though to go through. For being only a 10 year old girl, she goes through what seems like hell but comes back to tell about it but changes in this process.