Rhapsody on a Film by Kurosawa
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
Prologue
1. Yojimbo — The Film
2. Yojimbo — The Narrative Attractor
3. Léon — Unexpected Roots
4. Fresh —Yojimbo of the Ghetto
5. The King of Masks — Darwin’s Grandson
6. The Roan Inish Rotation
7. The Witches — Freud’s Captive Beauty
8. The Indeterminacy of Ponette and Memento
9. The “Peaceful Era of Tokugawa”
10. The Genius of Akira Kurosawa
11. Stray Dog — Toshiro Mifune
12. Shakespeare’s Rose by Any Other Word
13. East Is East / American Beauty
14. Kikujiro / Mifune / Julien Donkey-Boy
15. Donnie Darko — “Salvator Mundi”
16. Se7en — or Eight — Deadly Sins
17. Requiem for a Dream, Perhaps an Attractor
18. Run Lola Run’s Graceful Solution
19. Happiness Lost and Regained
Epilogue
Reference List
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
One of Akira Kurosawa’s most popular films, Yojimbo (1961)
tells the story of a vagrant samurai who outsmarts two gangs
warring to control a small town in mid-19th century Japan.
This plot — a lone hero who challenges both potent rivals struggling to control a place — has proved remarkably adaptable.
Recent film settings include the American southwest, New
York, the coast of Ireland, Viking Iceland, and outer space. The
rivals include drug dealers, police, witches, and seals, the hero
a hit-man, a psychopath, a senior, an orphan. These films track
the basic plot or veer off in unexpected directions. They provide
an evening’s delight or arouse enduring intellectual engagement
with a wide variety of disciplines.
Rhapsody on a Film by Kurosawa explores this cultural complex.
Films discussed include American Beauty (1999), Donnie Darko
(2001), The King of Masks (1996), Memento (2000), Ponette
(1996), Requiem for a Dream (2000), Se7en (1995), and The
Witches (1990). Other sections discuss possible origins of the plot
in the work of Dashiell Hammett and Shakespeare, a Yojimbo
hero who emerged in the final days of the Tokugawa Shogunate,
and the relation of Yojimbo to Kurosawa’s cinematic career.
Rhapsody on a Film by Kurosawa is the author’s first book.