Red Beard

A film about staring into the faces of poverty, destitution and death - and coming out optimistic and hopeful. It’s actually incredible how dark this movie gets, considering how warm the film feels by the end. It justifies its length with a rich collection of stories that increasingly infect the personal lives of the characters. Early in the film, a character comments on the cruelty of the universe towards these people, but Kurosawa progressively overshadows that comment with some deep empathy - that just seems to build through the course of the film. The scene where Oyata first cries on the bridge and the scene where she yells down the well were like ... life-changing ... I swear.