Monday, October 31, 2016

Akira Kurosawa

When I viewed the last episode of Yume or dreams by Akira Kurosawa,the surrealistic dream world shows his abiding love of the natural environment as a Luddite fantasy.The profusion of flowers,the agarian lifestyle and the celebratory mood of dance and music that accompanies a funeral.Whilst Kurosawa was against the use of nuclear weapons ,would he have forseen the devastation of Fukushima on future generations,the wipe out of the agarian lifestyle a forboding of the extent of technological destruction.
The pervasive influence of technological progress  is an uphill battle.As seen in Jamyang Kyentse Norbu's film Travellers and Magicians,there is a dilemma in introducing technological communication to a kingdom that had been cut off from the influences of commercial entertainment and relied on their oral stories to draws on traditional folk tales.How would such traditional culture hold against the excitement of dazzling Bollywood and Hollywood spectacular movies.The clash of modernity vs traditional is all to imminent as the protaganist dreams of a "cool lifestyle"that collides with the monk's simple narrative tale of lust and lurid passions.
   I would need to watch Kurosawa's "To Live " or Ikiru and contrast that with another great cinema director's epic film,Zhang YiMou's "To Live".Both deal with an individual's quest to look for meaning in Life.

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