"The rope that ties one human life to another is not to be touched."
A stunning, beautiful film. The story from Akira Kurosawa is wonderfully taut and meaningful, the on-location footage in the snowy mountains of Hokkaido is breathtaking, and the performances from Toshiro Mifune (in his first film!) and Takashi Shimura are memorable. It's impressive that this was director Senkichi Taniguchi's first film as well, as he showed such restraint and kept up a steady feeling of tension, while at the same time balancing the mood with scenes like the workers partying and the skiers in all that fresh powder.
The story on the surface is quite simple: three bank robbers escape into the mountains pursued by the police, not knowing that the only way out is over peaks only experts attempt to climb in the winter. Two of them manage to get to a ski lodge where they come across an elderly man, his adolescent granddaughter, and a mountaineer who is staying with them. These three are living in harmony despite the remoteness of this place, respecting nature, enjoying music like "My Old Kentucky Home," and kind enough to dig through many feet of snow to bury a pet pigeon which has (somewhat suspiciously) died. The two robbers bide their time, an avalanche having wiped out the road up to the lodge, but eventually fear its repair and take action.
The arc of Takashi Shimura's character is astonishing, and really elevates the film. Early on he's the tough leader of the gang, but while isolated in the lodge, with one of his men dead, he softens. In the young girl he sees his daughter who was killed, an interest Mifune's character tellingly mistakes for lechery, chiding him that she's young enough to be his granddaughter. Later, in the face of something bigger than the money or escaping the police, Mifune's character remains the same, cutthroat to the last, while Shimura's finds his humanity, seeing the sacrifice that his guide has made. He feels true remorse for what he's put the innocent people through, and how well they've treated him in spite of it.
All of this is heightened considerably by the on-location shooting in Hokkaido. The robbers trudge through a thick blanket of snow, the wind howling, and watch in horror as an avalanche descends. To them this is an alien world to be endured, whereas to the three locals, it's sublime. One waxes poetic about the ethereal sight of the rosen morgen, the rosy morning, as the sun hits the snow at a low angle, and I felt this even in black and white, with Taniguchi giving us those clouds billowing off the top of the peaks and the music swelling. Through it all, we get the sense of the smallness of humans in the face of the majesty of nature, physically speaking as well as in the sense of the pettiness of greed and cruelty, and yet the film is about hope and redemption. That's something that must have resonated in 1947 Japan, and still resonates today. This one is a hidden gem, and one to check out.
A stunning, beautiful film. The story from Akira Kurosawa is wonderfully taut and meaningful, the on-location footage in the snowy mountains of Hokkaido is breathtaking, and the performances from Toshiro Mifune (in his first film!) and Takashi Shimura are memorable. It's impressive that this was director Senkichi Taniguchi's first film as well, as he showed such restraint and kept up a steady feeling of tension, while at the same time balancing the mood with scenes like the workers partying and the skiers in all that fresh powder.
The story on the surface is quite simple: three bank robbers escape into the mountains pursued by the police, not knowing that the only way out is over peaks only experts attempt to climb in the winter. Two of them manage to get to a ski lodge where they come across an elderly man, his adolescent granddaughter, and a mountaineer who is staying with them. These three are living in harmony despite the remoteness of this place, respecting nature, enjoying music like "My Old Kentucky Home," and kind enough to dig through many feet of snow to bury a pet pigeon which has (somewhat suspiciously) died. The two robbers bide their time, an avalanche having wiped out the road up to the lodge, but eventually fear its repair and take action.
The arc of Takashi Shimura's character is astonishing, and really elevates the film. Early on he's the tough leader of the gang, but while isolated in the lodge, with one of his men dead, he softens. In the young girl he sees his daughter who was killed, an interest Mifune's character tellingly mistakes for lechery, chiding him that she's young enough to be his granddaughter. Later, in the face of something bigger than the money or escaping the police, Mifune's character remains the same, cutthroat to the last, while Shimura's finds his humanity, seeing the sacrifice that his guide has made. He feels true remorse for what he's put the innocent people through, and how well they've treated him in spite of it.
All of this is heightened considerably by the on-location shooting in Hokkaido. The robbers trudge through a thick blanket of snow, the wind howling, and watch in horror as an avalanche descends. To them this is an alien world to be endured, whereas to the three locals, it's sublime. One waxes poetic about the ethereal sight of the rosen morgen, the rosy morning, as the sun hits the snow at a low angle, and I felt this even in black and white, with Taniguchi giving us those clouds billowing off the top of the peaks and the music swelling. Through it all, we get the sense of the smallness of humans in the face of the majesty of nature, physically speaking as well as in the sense of the pettiness of greed and cruelty, and yet the film is about hope and redemption. That's something that must have resonated in 1947 Japan, and still resonates today. This one is a hidden gem, and one to check out.