Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window

A voyeuristic suspense

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Rear window is considered by many to be one of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest works. The master of suspense focuses on the pleasures of watching the mundane and everyday lives of others. He appeals to the dark and instinctive nature inherent in all of us; to know about the lives of others. However, he also twists around the concept of voyeurism to serve a good purpose lest anyone have too much of a moral inhibition to enjoy the movie. Whatever be the moral implications of the movie be, there is no denying that Rear Window is a suspense movie par excellence.

The movie is about L.B Jefferies, professional photographer who has been confined to his apartment in a wheel chair after he broke his leg in the pursuit of taking an exclusive picture. As he has been confined in his apartment for six weeks he becomes progressively bored. To amuse himself he takes to watching the lives of his neighbors from the rear window of his apartment. There he is able to see them going about with their mundane lives. He also gives them some interesting nicknames. He calls a ballerina Miss Torso, a spinster Miss Lonely Hearts and so forth.

His only visitors are his nurse Stella, and his girl friend Lisa Carol Fremont with whom he shares an uneasy relationship. He believes that Lisa maybe a bit too perfect for him. Lisa on the other hand loves him but even her patience is running out because of Jeffries’ moodiness from being cooped up within the apartment. However from being a passive onlooker of the events happening around him, Jefferies becomes more obsessive about their live and even becomes an active participant in it when he begins to suspect a neighbor (a traveling salesman) to have murdered his wife. Though nobody believes him at the beginning he eventually manages to convince Lisa of the crime. Together they try to find out if the murder actually occurred or whether it was all a figment of Jefferies’ imagination.

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Hitchcock shoots the entire movie from within Jefferies’ apartment. Most of the time, we are shown the same view that Jeffries has from the rear window. By doing so Hitchcock gives us a glimpse of all the happenings in the other apartments of the building. Through the open windows (due to the oppressive heat) we see the other bit characters of the movie go on with their live with varying emotions. Jefferies as well as we, see their anger, joy, sorrow and frustration. The most amazing part of it all is that not even once are they aware that someone is watching them and is paying close attention to them.

Hitchcock creates a comic panel kind of feel when he shows different stories unfolding opposite to Jefferies’ apartment through the windows of the various characters’ apartment. Because of this he is able to show multiple stories and lives simultaneously. This creates a natural sense of identifying with the setting rather than being distant from it. Also by giving us the view from protagonist’s angle we are able to identify with the same feeling that Jefferies has. We sense his boredom, his anxiety and even his initial mild interest in the lives of his neighbors.

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Hitchcock shows his master class in keeping us hooked with such limited setting and keeps us engaged with some imaginative narrative. He is able to maintain, almost throughout the movie, the suspense of whether or not the salesman murdered his wife. By giving us a glimpse of an event which occurs when Jefferies’ is asleep he casts doubts in our mind as to the veracity of Jefferies’ claim. This helps in generating the right amount tension in us to find out the truth.

The performances in this movie are all superlative to say the least. James Stewart is brilliant as the complex Jefferies, who go through a gamut of emotions. Due to his character’s lack of mobility Stewart has to convey the various feelings of Jeffries through his eyes, facial expressions and vocal variations rather than with body language. Grace Kelly as the perfect Lisa is indeed just that: Perfect. She brings an unknown something on to the screen every time she comes on it and lifts our hearts instantly. She adds that much needed glamour to an otherwise dreary setting of the movie. The snappy dialogues too make the movie immensely enjoyable to watch.

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Voyeurism is a topic that Hitchcock briefly touched upon in Psycho. It has been showcased in many movies before and since Rear Window. But what Hitchcock has done here is to turn it more into a harmless pastime rather than something for sexual gratification or for other dark pleasures. He is not concerned with moral issues raised in the movie either. He is there to entertain us and to make a memorable suspense drama. And he is more than successful in that.

Forrest Gump

A movie like a box of chocolates

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Once in a while you get to see a movie that you just can’t get enough of. You had such a good time watching the movie that you tend to go back and watch it because of the sheer joy of watching it. Forrest Gump is one such movie which you can watch for a zillion times and still not get bored with it. Even after years since it became a big hit and swept the Oscars of its year it still feels as fresh today as when it was first released.

It is the story of a man named Forrest Gump and his adventures through life. He is someone who is a bit slow as far as mental abilities are concerned. You see his IQ is 5 points less than normal. So much so that his mother has to sleep with the local school principal to get him admitted into a school. Early on Forrest learns most of the things about life from his mother, who explains things to him in as simple a term as possible.

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At school he is befriended by Jenny Curran, a girl who is physically and sexually abused by her father. Forrest falls in love with her from the very beginning itself. She on her part never lets on how she feels about him. However it is clear that she cares for him. As they grow up Forrest meets others who play a significant part in influencing his life. He meets Benjamin Buford "Bubba" Blue while serving together in the army at Vietnam. Bubba tells him all there is to know about the shrimping business. This later on helps Forrest to make a fortune from shrimping.

He also meets his commanding officer Lieutenant Dang while serving in Vietnam. Lieutenant Dang’s faimily members has fought and died in every war America was involved in. He therefore wants to die in the line of duty at Vietnam. However his plans are thwarted by Forrest when he saves him from an air raid. His legs however are amputated in the attack. He later on joins Forrest in his shrimping business thereby becoming a millionaire himself.

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He meets Jenny again after coming back and finds her to be going down a road of destruction. She has taken to drugs and prostitution and seems keen not to drag Forrest into her doomed life. However she does make love with him once and leaves him while he is sleeping. A heartbroken Forrest begins to run all over the country and becomes a celebrity. But one day he gets a letter from Jenny that changes his life once again.

The best part of Forrest Gump is its screenplay. The movie’s catchphrases like “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get” or “Stupid is as stupid does” has achieved iconic proportions. The various situations in which Forrest finds himself in like meeting dead presidents, achieving success in sports, meeting other famous celebrities and generally being in the middle of all the major events in America’s most tumultuous period, is so well integrated into the plot that one cant help but enjoy it. It makes you laugh and cry at the same time and makes poignant remarks on life. Even Forrest, who achieves everything he didn’t wish for finds it hard to achieve the one thing he really wants; Jenny’s love.

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The other major plus point of the movie is its superb cast. Tom Hanks, Sally Field and Gary Sinise all give superlative performances. Tom Hanks pays the character so well with the right touch of humor and poignancy that it is difficult to think of anyone other than he would have been able to do justice to the role. Gary Sinise gives an explosive performance as the crippled Lieutenant Dang and holding together the movie in its middle stages. He is so good that there are stages when he overshadows even Hanks.

A mention has to be made of the visual effects in the movie. Forrest Gump is a prime example of how to make CGI a medium of telling the story rather than making it the primary focus of the movie. So often we have seen good movies being undone due to their over indulgence with effects. Here however it brings to life one of the most magical moments in the movies like that of Forrest’s meeting with President Kennedy of Forrest playing ping pong.

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The overwhelming theme of the movie is its positive outlook towards life. Almost every major character in the movie finds contentment in their lives. The movie shows how someone like Gump, who should ideally have no chance of succeeding in life, makes it big just because he flows according to life’s various currents. The movie gives the message of sticking on with life and not giving up no mater how tough the going might get. Both life and the movie are like its recurring catchphrase “like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.”

Rhapsody in August (Hachigatsu no kyōshikyoku)

Remembrance of a horror

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Akira Kurosawa’s movies in the later stages of his careers were starkly darker than his earlier ones. In Rhapsody in August he tires to tackle the Nagasaki atom bomb dropping and its impact on three different generations. It shows us how three different Japanese generations and an American views the bombing and its effect on human life.

The movie is mainly said from the viewpoint of four children who come to visit their grandmother. Their parents had gone to visit a long lost brother of the grandmother. The grandmother’s lost sibling is in his death bed now and wants to meet his last surviving blood relative before he dies. However the grandmother’s memory has become increasingly selective with age and she does not even remember the name of such a brother. So she sends her son and daughter (the children’s parents) to visit them instead. She does this so that the grandchildren are left in her care and she could spend time with them during their summer vacations.

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The children, to begin with, are thoroughly modern and westernized. They walk around in their jeans and t-shirts with American logos. They are in awe of their rich American cousins and wishes to spend their vacation at Hawaii. But a trip to the nearby Nagasaki changes their attitude to America. They realize that their grandfather had died in the bombing while working at a local school. They also realize how tough it must have been for their grandmother to lead life from then on as a single mother of two. The children grow increasingly resentful of America. They begin to feel and understand an event which they had known only through text books and as numbers.

The grandmother relives her past by way telling stories of it to her grandchildren. Through her stories, which are sometimes factual and sometimes mythical, she introduces the children to the beauty of the land and the sufferings of people in the aftermath of the bombing. She says that she was resentful towards America for a long time but has now taken the attitude that the real blame should go to War and not to the country. She is of the opinion that countries will do anything to win wars.

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The grandmother’s children harbor no ill wills whatsoever to the Americans. They are in fact happy to have found a rich relative back in Hawaii. They scheme and plan to get the grandmother to go to the US so that they can take up jobs at their cousin’s pineapple factory. They seem to neither care nor have any great feeling for the tragedy and have almost forgotten it.

The grandmother ultimately relents to visiting Hawaii when her brother and his son Clark (half Japanese and half Caucasian) request her repeatedly to visit them. She however says that she will visit only after the anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing, her husband’s death anniversary as well. This takes the American family by surprise as they had not known that the grandmother’s husband had died in the bombing. The grandmother’s own children feel that their mother had squandered a golden opportunity for them. They felt that the American do not like to reminded of the event.

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Clark however turns out to be polite and apologetic about the bombing. He manages to strike a bond with the grandmother and even participates in the memorial service on the day of the anniversary. His stay is cut short when the news of his father’s death reaches. The grandmother too remembers her brother at that time and is devastated that she did not visit him earlier. This has an effect on her mental stability and a thunderstorm soon afterwards have her reliving the horrors of that fateful day when the atom bomb was dropped in Nagasaki.

Kurosawa tries to show the impact of the bomb on the lives of the people who survived it. Some of the scenes are poignant and moving. The sequences were the children learn more about the bombing, where the survivors pay tribute to their classmates, the utter destruction symbolized by the twisted metal of a jungle gym in the school yard all stay with you even after you have watched the movie.

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But that is not to say that the movie is a masterpiece. I found the movie really tough to watch as the drama was a bit too low key and the pace a bit too slow for my liking. There is a definite bias in Kurosawa’s interpretation of the event. There is a definite finger pointing towards the Americans as being responsible for dropping the bomb while conveniently forgetting the events leading up to it. One can argue that the old lady does not harbor any resentment towards the Americans. But even those moments are made to be less profound than the accusatory moments.

I am one of those who strongly believe that the master’s later works pales in comparison with his earlier ones. Rhapsody in August however still shows glimpses of Kurosawa’s mastery over the medium. Nobody can capture beauty or take a shot that is imprinted in your mind for the rest of your life as Kurosawa can. It just proves that a genius and his work will always be remembered just like major events. No matter how good or bad they are.

Reviews of Akira Kurosawa's Major works

Akira Kurosawa

Rashomon (1950)

Ikiru (1952)

Seven Samurai (1954)

Hidden Fortress (1958)

Yojimbo (1961)

High And Low (1963)

Red Beard (1965)

Kagemusha (1980)

Ran (1985)

Rhapsody In August (1991)

Ran – Movie Review

The fruitlessness of chaos

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Akira Kurosawa’s Ran is an adaptation of Shakespear’s King Lear as well as the legends of the feudal lord Mori Motonari. The meaning of ran is chaos and that’s what we get to see in this film. The feeling of harmony and peace that the movie starts off with is quickly replaced by one of violence and treachery. And the fruitlessness of it all is what makes it the saddest part of the whole affair.

The story starts off with the old patriarch of the Ichimonji clan, Hidetora, deciding to abdicate the rule of his kingdom to his three sons; Taro, Jiro, and Saburo. Taro, the eldest, will receive the prestigious First Castle and become leader of the Ichimonji clan, while Jiro and Saburo will be given the Second and Third Castles. This means that the younger brothers are to support the eldest in running the kingdom and thereby be together as a united force. Hidetora will remain the titular leader and retain the title of Great Lord. Suburo criticizes this plan by saying that Hidetora himself achieved power through treachery and that he is foolish to expect his sons to be loyal to him. The king mistakes this suggestion for disloyalty and banishes Sabuora from the kingdom.

However Saburo’s foresight is proven true when under the behest of his wife Lady Kaede Taro begins to take more and more control of the kingdom. Things reach a head when Hidetora is forced to comply with Taro’s demands of confirming his new standing and powers by signing a document in blood. Hidetora thereafter storms out of Taro’s castle and moves on to the second castle of Jiro. But he finds that Jiro wants to use his father as a pawn to pursue his own ambitions and even asks his father to enter the castle but without his guards.

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The old man then leaves for the third castle where he is welcomed and given refuge. However the combined forces of Taro and Jiro attack the castle and begin to destroy everything and murder everyone in sight. Hidetora is distaught and he wishes to commit seppuku (ritual suicide). However he the finds that he wont be able to do so because his sword is broken and he subsequently plunges into madness. Meanwhile Jiro murders Taro and becomes the leader of the clan. He now has an affair with Lady Kaede who wants Jiro’s Buddhist wife Lady Sué to be murdered. Lady Sué learns of this plan and flees from her castle.

Sabuora learns of his brother’s treachery and gathers around an army of warlords to search and rescue his father. Jiro learns of Sabuora’s intentions and sends his own army to confront him. Jiro attackes Saburo’s forces and is ultimately decimated by the warlords and their armies. Saburo finds his father but one their way back he is murdered by Jiro's gunnery brigade whom Jiro had sent to murder Saburo incase he found their father. The old man too dies of heart break at the sight of the dead body of the one son who loved him.

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The greatness of the film is the characters. Kurosawa gives enough space for all of the character to develop and showcase their depth. Lady Kaede’s tranquility on the outside masks her turmoil inside. Her clan was destroyed by Hidetora and was forced to marry Taro. She therefore has a hidden agenda of destroying the Ichimonji clan. She too is beheaded in the end by one of the loyal generals of Jiro who finds out that she had planned the path destruction all the way.

We also find it difficult to sympathize with either Hidetora or his sons. They all are seeking power and wants to attain it even if it means ripping apart families even their own. Even Saburo sides with the enemies of the family in the end though it can be argued that he at least was loyal to his father till the very end.

Kurosawa also tires to convey the message that the cycle of violence is never ending and that our bad deeds will always come back to haunt us. He also gives us the depressing view that even good can sometimes be crushed by evil in the course of chaos. He illustrates this with the fate of Lady Sué. Like Lady Kaede her family too was destroyed by Hidetora. Her brother Tsurumaru’s was blinded by Hidetora and her castle destroyed. But unlike Kaede, Sué embraces Buddhism and forgives her father-in-law. But even she is killed by Jiro’s forces.

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The other striking feature of the movie is the visuals. Kurosawa shows that he is as adept in handling color as he was with black and white. He uses the medium of film like a canvas and paints some of the most mesmerizing visuals you will ever see on a movie screen. The sheer beauty of the visuals is breathtaking.

He also uses the visuals to be symbolic. For example one of the climatic shots of the movie shows the blind Tsurumaru tap his way to the edge of a precipice clutching a Buddhist scroll given to him by his sister. Kurosawa captures a long shot where Tsurumaru seems to be engulfed by a reddening sky and he seems to lose his balance and fall off the edge. However we see that he just barely manages to hold on to the cliff even though he is forced to let go of the scroll. Kurosawa shows that sometimes even God cannot save us from ourselves.

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Unlike his earlier films Kurasowa does not provide any glimmer of hope or redemption in the despair that is all encompassing the film. He does not provide any salvation for any of the characters. He vision is apocalyptic and hence the visuals of the war are appropriately chaotic and brutal. But still he never glorifies the violence and manages to convey the fruitlessness of it all which is the overall theme of the movie.

Reviews of Akira Kurosawa's Major works

Akira Kurosawa

Rashomon (1950)

Ikiru (1952)

Seven Samurai (1954)

Hidden Fortress (1958)

Yojimbo (1961)

High And Low (1963)

Red Beard (1965)

Kagemusha (1980)

Ran (1985)

Rhapsody In August (1991)

Red Beard (Akahige)

A statement on humanity

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Red Beard marked the end of the golden age of Akira Kurosawa. After red beard he found it extremely difficult to get financial backing for his projects and went on to make only 7 more films in the next 30 years. But Red Beard enabled Kurosawa to make a statement he had only hinted at in High and Low. The sufferings of man can be alleviated only if we are able to help one another.

Kurosawa chooses the setting of a clinic for the poor to make this statement, which is perfect since no other place would have enabled him to tell the stories he wanted to tell. The story begins with a young doctor named Yasumoto, educated in modern medical practices at Nagasaki, coming to visit the clinic at the behest of his father. He is there to meet the chief doctor at the clinic Dr. Niige, who is more popularly referred to as ‘Red Beard’ due to his beard being a shade of red. Yasumoto finds the clinic to be not to his liking and he is even more distraught when he learns from Dr.Niige that he has been tricked into coming there as a replacement for another inept doctor.

Yasumoto is not at all thrilled at working in the clinic. He believes that his knowledge would have helped him become the doctor of the shogun which would have enabled him to be very wealthy and famous. He is proud and arrogant about his education and even boasts that he knows more about medicine than the Red Beard. He believes that the Red Beard only wants to steal his notes and studies. He also learns that he cannot quit the job as he has been appointed by the magistrate himself. Therefore he decides to be such a nuisance that the Dr.Niige himself will be forced to throw him out of the clinic.

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With this intention in mind he goes about breaking every rule at the clinic. He even refuses to wear the uniform of the doctors at the clinic. But the Red Beard slowly manages to draw him into the daily affairs of the clinic and manages breaks down his resistance one by one. It is through Yasumoto’s interaction with the various patients and his subsequent transformation that Kurosawa propels the story forward.

The narrative of this movie is mostly episodic. Each one of the cases that Yasumoto encounters at the clinic gives a new perspective of life to the young doctor. Kurosawa paints the larger picture with the help small, seemingly innocuous characters. The genius of the man is very evident when he is able to give the proper depth and development to each of these characters.

Yasumoto realizes his own naivety when he is forced to deal with a psychopathic child abuse victim, referred to as ‘The Mantis’. The mantis is a beautiful young lady who seduces her victims before murdering them with her hairpin. The young doctor barely manages to come out alive off this encounter with her.

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He realizes that he is yet to acquire the mental fortitude to be a doctor when he collapses after witnessing a surgery for the first time. When the Red Beard asks him to tend to a dying man named Rokuskue, Yasumoto is unable to bear the poignancy of death. He is not even able to be alone in the room with the old man and is visibly relieved when the nurse takes over from him.

Yasumoto is also profoundly influenced by the life stories of these patients. Be it the hopelessness of ‘The Mantis’, or the grim and harsh reality of Rokuskue’s life and death or even the undying love of the saintly Sahachi; who works relentlessly to help others even while he is poor and dying. In fact it is from Sahachi that Yasumoto learns the importance of the uniform he had refused to wear till then. Sahachi tells Yasumoto that the uniform represents a beacon of hope to the poor as it identifies a clinic doctor who would take care of them even when other wealthy physicians wouldn’t. Yasumoto is so influenced by this that after Sahachi’s death he starts wearing the uniform.

Yasumoto’s growing up is completed when he is placed in charge of curing a 12 year old girl rescued from a brothel by the Red Beard. The girl’s illness is as much psychological as it is physical, mainly due to the cruel treatment that she had been subjected to by others at the brothel. Yasumoto is so immersed in curing her that he himself falls ill in the process. The Red Beard however uses this opportunity to cure the girl further by putting her in charge of nursing Yasumoto. Her treatment is completed when she tries to prevent another young boy from the path of crime.

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The movie is not without its flaws. At times the movie moves forward at a snail’s place. Sometimes you just feel the dreariness to be unbearable and strangely it makes you detached from the emotional bind that is so necessary in such movies. Sometimes you just wish that Kurosawa would get a move along in telling the story.

Having said that, the movie, which clearly pales in comparison to the master’s other movies, still manages to be head and shoulders above most other movies even now. Kurosawa’s attention to detail is very evident in the movie. And his use of light and shade is as amazing as in any of his other movies. Red Beard is a movie which would lose half its effect if it were to be shot in color.

It is said that Kurosawa took 2 years to make this movie. The production was so tense that it brought to an end one of the greatest collaborations of movie history; that of Toshiro Mifune and Akira Kurosawa. Although Mifune gave another towering performance in the movie, he was so frustrated by the never ending schedule of the movie that a conflict between the two was inevitable and they never worked together again. This was also the last of Kurosawa’s black and white movies.

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In spite of all this Kurosawa was undeterred in making a most poignant statement on humanity. He tried to show that love for a fellow human being is more important than acquiring all the wealth and fame in the world. Above all Red Beard makes the statement that there is nothing more important in the world than being able to help lessen the pain and sufferings of others. And the is the overall message of the film.

Reviews of Akira Kurosawa's Major works

Akira Kurosawa

Rashomon (1950)

Ikiru (1952)

Seven Samurai (1954)

Hidden Fortress (1958)

Yojimbo (1961)

High And Low (1963)

Red Beard (1965)

Kagemusha (1980)

Ran (1985)

Rhapsody In August (1991)