krasik Reviews

Sense and Sensibility (1995)

The contradictions of duty and love, and the maturity born of suffering

[8/10 · 26 November 2010]

Fascinating film - that gives me much to think about.

The film is an essay on the dialectic between passion and duty. It also describes a young woman's - Marriane's - coming of age, in the sense of maturity born of suffering.

Perhaps the movement from passion to duty is the sign of maturity. The film teaches us to guard against out passions by observing well the character of our companions. In particular to see how another bears their duty. The movie starts with a son's failure to fulfill his duty.

It also shows that money can be as strong and stronger a force than love - and as Marriane later indicates, that this may be a valid position.

It also shows how bitter suffering can be redemptive, teaching us to cherish the solid goodness that is within reach, and look skeptically upon grand and romantic illusions.

Korczak (1990)

Maintaining human dignity

[28 August 2002]

The Doctor strikes one as a solid man - man of courage, unbreakable. Yet to the entreaty of the resistance movement, he says "I have no dignity. I have 200 children." What are we to think of his ultimate actions in walking his children into the death trains? Wajda seems to give these final actions an air of honor, and a dreamlike finale scene, but we must reflect what these children would suffer upon their peaceful entrance to those cars.

What is needful, above all else is to remain living. But living as human beings, not slaves, victims of sexual and sadistic perverts, cattle. Where do we see the dignity of the human spirit in this film? We see it in the doctor and in the resistance fighters, perhaps in some of the kids. All others are broken spirits, hollow remnants of humans. Anything is worthwhile if it will maintain man's humanity in such times. They should have sang, danced, created, or fought, killed, destroyed. In the resistance fighters that rush upon the scene so briefly, we see the sparkling eyes of men not bound by fear, free men. Korczak also remains free spiritually, refusing the armband, but we see that in his personal resistance he can only expect to be broken or killed by one of the many Germans that he'll encounter. He can expect to see his children hideously killed, and himself comforting them to no avail. Anything is good if it maintains the spirit. Perhaps training the children to fight would have been appropriate. Certainly no non-violent means of resistance are affective against the Nazi's. As Gandhi says, non-violent resistance does not work on machines and beasts. The Nazi's were machines.

It is tempting to condemn Korczak for his ultimate actions - thought it shows a pathetic tendency in him which runs throughout the film. He wants to give people a dignified death, to save children without sending the non-Jewish-looking one's to hide with Poles. Has he not shut himself to the truth - that truth which the escaped man yelled out on the streets before his death? "They are sending you to your death!" Korczak, the lover of children, leads them proudly to their cart. Had the resistance shot him as a conspirator and taken the children to be trained to fight, or disperse them to seek their own survival - would not this have been somehow better than aiding the Germans in a neat efficient murder of Jewish children?

**** 2010 Update **** Rereading this after so many years - I see the foolish strictness of my college years. No one can know, growing up in a peaceful luxurious time, the feelings of a man responsible for the lives of all those children. I give all respect and honor to Korczak, blessings on his name and memory for the torments endured and the good he did in his life.

Sanjuro (1962)

Physchology of leadership, the senselessness of war

[27 August 2002]

Leadership. Sanjuro is able to lead men because he appears confident, and is confident. His presence subjugates men, as a man's presence subjugates boys. We see here how a group comes to have a leader. First one man stands out against him, the competitor for leadership, but Sanjuro's intuition and actions put him ahead. There is a beautiful marked difference between Sanjuro and the men. He is the lazy quiet tiger, seemingly passive yet containing an immense power - a tightly drawn bow. The men are barking puppies, energy spilling over, but to no good end.

Kurosawa presents a couple challenges to the viewer. THere is a terrible absurdity in the killing of all these men, for it becomes quiet clear with the symbol of the prisoner, that the average soldier is a frightened herd animal, not good or evil, but cowardly. Sanjuro recognizes this but has no choice, for he wants to live, and so must kill. Thus he must even kill the young men who he helps, when they foolishly come after him. The prisoner is won over by the old lady - so we see an almost christian ethic. In the tensions of the film one feels that the people, riled up by lies to fight for the enemy, quickly become targets of the just young men's swords - luckily it does not come to this, but one recognizes the horrible possibility and inevitability of such a struggle. Thus we are faced with a critic of war - men, scared like cattle battle under the flag of corrupt leaders, and those that may love them must kill them, if they are not to die by sword, or become slaves to tyrants.

"stupid friends are worse than enemies" For you know who your enemies are, and that they wish to destroy you.

In Sanjuro we also see the soldier, so long in battle that he is unable to live a normal life. He can not wear the house kimoto, he is to bound up in fighting - he is samuri, warrior, and he cannot escape this, much as Achilles cannot return home to Pthia. And we sense Sanjuro must whilt in the easy domestic life, for his is the road of struggle. The pleasant scent of the straw in the barn, the pretty camillias are still able to touch him, but he cannot enjoy them; he is a soldier, and therefore his sensitivities must yeild to the demands of war.

We see only one man worthy standing with Sanjuro, and that is the uncle, the chamberlain, the horseface. These to stand out as burning stars against a massive black sky - the rest is horrifying; the chaos of tyranical men and the fear crazed soldiers, their supplicants.

Ikiru (1952)

"the unexamined life is not worth living"

[18 May 2002]

Watanabe realizes how inessential most of his life has been. "the mummy" has been dead for many years when he finds out about his body's illness. The coming of death awakens him to life. All previous considerations of remaining stable and safe are shattered (the man having slept for 30 years awakens to the emptiness of his life). What happens here is the neglect of the Delphi oracle "know thyself"; the approach of death forces Watanabe to examine his life, and this reveals the horrifying void. Many men postpone Socrate's question "What is a good life" until some shock awakens them to the decades lost to thoughtlessness (perhaps many only awaken to quickly fall back asleep, like a slave awakened from wonderful dreams who demands to return to them). Watanabe's courage, as noted by the drinking novelist, is his serious consideration of his life (stand and fight) rather than going back to sleep or suicide (run like hell).

Watanabe's courting of the working girl is a determination to find something in life, and at their last meeting she gives him the necessary clue. How can you be so happy? She answers that she makes bunnies and thinks many children are happy thanks to her. She lives with some meaning, however trite. Watanabe returns to work determined to do something meaningful. He is happy as soon as he gets the idea and until he dies, working honestly to help create something beautiful.

The song sung by him, in the first instant(when drunk) seems to suggest a passionate hedonistic life - given the atmospher this interpretation fits; however the second singing (his last words) is Watanabe swinging on a swing in the park he helped build. In the first he is melancholy and weeping, in the second he is joyous. The words can be paraphrased "life is short. fall in love maiden. don't let the passion in your heart die". Watanabe's message is not to indulge in drunken forgetfulness but to find something worthwhile to love, and use one's passion to create something good. It is an appeal to not fall into self-forgeting, but awaken to the urgency of life and the need to love beauty and create it.

Watanabe says, "I don't have time to be angry". The urgency he feels makes this clear - there is only time to love and admire. In light of his purpose, anger is pettiness.

while admiring the sky "This is beautiful. For 30 years I have not noticed".

The movie also comments on the apathy of people in bearocracy. He reveals that one man can do great things and that apathy is evil that destroys society.

Kirasowa asks us to examine out lives, to awaken and look about. Beauty is going unadmired, and men capable of creating beauty are passing the bucket.