Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru (1960)'s comments

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MoutardedShroom

What a movie. What a fucking gorgeous movie. And what an ending!

9 years 2 months ago

Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well is apparently lumped in with his Shakespearean adaptations Ran and Throne of Blood, but it doesn't follow Hamlet's plot so much as it remixes its elements. It echoes Hamlet, but does not retell it. It IS a revenge tragedy, starring an unrecognizable Toshiro Mifune (if he's not in samurai garb, I just don't see it) as business executive Nishi who has infiltrated a corrupt corporation to avenge his father's death, a man pushed to suicide by the board. Now he's making them pay, forcing them into disgrace and suicide themselves. Kurosawa has essentially taken "The Mouse-Trap" and made it the core of his film, with false ghosts haunting board members, and a blasted post-war Japan as a stand-in for rotten Denmark. Nishi is more a figure from Film Noir than he is Hamlet, however, having little of the Danish Prince's introspection, though he retains his doubts. Journalists as a kind of opening chorus from another era of theater, a hellish scene in the mouth of a volcano, the way the plot is slowly revealed to the audience even to the point of not showing important events against all narrative sense - I admire Kurosawa's craft and bravery a great deal. But while corporate corruption isn't a problem unique to 1960 Japan, it's also not that engaging as Kurosawa's chanbara films, and will never feel as rewatch-worthy as the director's better known classics in that genre.

8 years 6 months ago