Classic World Cinema by Courtyard Gallery will present Rhapsody in August on Friday, Jan. 26, at 8 p.m. at Flood Gallery Fine Art Center, 2160 U.S. 70, Swannanoa.
Rhapsody in August
Movie Information
In Brief: Extremely late-period Kurosawa, from a time when the lauded auteur seemed to have either given up or lost the knack entirely. While Kurosawa often delved into the melancholic, especially in his later works, Rhapsody in August (1991) digresses into the downright maudlin. While the film offers some vaguely humanist sentiment about the bombing of Nagasaki, it also offers Richard Gere as an ostensibly half-Japanese man visiting his grieving aunt. As unlikely as that may seem, what's potentially more difficult to buy is that Gere isn't even the biggest problem here. The real issue is that Kurosawa seems to have lost his filter, drifting between heavy-handed visual metaphors and awkward characterization ill-befitting his legacy. Had this come from any other director, there's a good chance it would have been more acceptable — but this is Kurosawa, and we could be justified in expecting more.
| Score: | |
| Genre: | Drama |
| Director: | Akira Kurosawa |
| Starring: | Sachiko Murase, Richard Gere, Hisashi Igawa, Narumi Kayashima |
| Rated: | PG |
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