Ah what a frustrating movie. Around the 30 minute mark I had a thought. All of the different plots the movie was going to explore through out the story had been introduced. I was intrigued and/or entertained by all of them. Knowing that this isn’t regarded too highly in Kurosawa’s filmography, I was worried the sheer abundance of different characters we were following would cause the film to collapse on itself by the end. Now I won’t say it collapses on itself but this is a messy film.
This is a fascinating concept of a film, exploring the lives of those living in slums outside of Tokyo. There’s a couple different ways to make this movie work, and Dodes’ka-den doesn’t commit to any of them.
You could:1. Focus in on me story or one central character.2. Keep the vignette style, but play a vignette in its entirety, instead of a scene from one, a scene from another, a scene from another, and then coming back to one story. 3. Keep the scattered approach of slowly building all the different vignettes and have them come together in the end.OR4. Keep the scattered approach of how each of the vignettes are shown, but edit them in a more appropriate manner. (Maybe don’t follow up the mentally ill homeless man’s son dying of starvation with shenanigans from the wife swapping couples?)
There are moments and scenes throughout this film which I find fantastic. Unfortunately it’s edited in such a messy and random way it undermines itself constantly. I still liked this movie but it could have been significantly better if it was more focused.
Ah what a frustrating movie. Around the 30 minute mark I had a thought. All of the different plots the movie was going to explore through out the story had been introduced. I was intrigued and/or entertained by all of them. Knowing that this isn’t regarded too highly in Kurosawa’s filmography, I was worried the sheer abundance of different characters we were following would cause the film to collapse on itself by the end. Now I won’t say it collapses on itself but this is a messy film.
This is a fascinating concept of a film, exploring the lives of those living in slums outside of Tokyo. There’s a couple different ways to make this movie work, and Dodes’ka-den doesn’t commit to any of them.
You could:1. Focus in on me story or one central character.2. Keep the vignette style, but play a vignette in its entirety, instead of a scene from one, a scene from another, a scene from another, and then coming back to one story. 3. Keep the scattered approach of slowly building all the different vignettes and have them come together in the end.OR4. Keep the scattered approach of how each of the vignettes are shown, but edit them in a more appropriate manner. (Maybe don’t follow up the mentally ill homeless man’s son dying of starvation with shenanigans from the wife swapping couples?)
There are moments and scenes throughout this film which I find fantastic. Unfortunately it’s edited in such a messy and random way it undermines itself constantly. I still liked this movie but it could have been significantly better if it was more focused.
