183 - Red Beard, 1965, Japan. Dir. Akira Kurosawa.

Sunday, July 2, 2017

183 - Red Beard, 1965, Japan.  Dir. Akira Kurosawa.

Even bad food tastes good if you chew it well.

So says Red Beard to his new intern Yasumoto.

Yasumoto is a young doctor fresh from a Dutch medical school in Nagasaki.

His father is a prominent doctor and has connections.

He himself intends to serve the Shogun and live a great life enjoying wealth and prestige.

He is proud.

But Yasumoto has been assigned here.

At this . . . clinic.

Provided by the government.

For poor people.

This is not the way to build a shining career.

It is the slow track to insignificance.

Invisibility.

Poverty.

Struggle.

And toil.

Who would work here by choice?

Yasumoto suspects he was put here for punishment.

Because he wanted to marry a girl whose father had promised her to another man.

And he is bitter.

His young colleague has reinforced his feelings by cynically introducing him to his new job, warning him of strict rules and harsh conditions and a tyrannical boss.

Yasumoto will discover the description to be more than inaccurate.

Red Beard, or properly Dr. Kyojo Niide--the starring role played once again by Toshiro Mifune--is a kind, deeply humanistic man who has given his life to the care of others.

Yasumoto will spend the three-hour-five-minute movie learning this lesson.

And we will be more than willing to learn it with him.

Here are the story lines, each involving a patient in Red Beard's and Yasumoto's care.

The Mantis.

Rokusuke.

Sahachi.

Otoyo.

Chogi.

If you have not seen the movie, then this list of names will mean nothing to you, especially if you are unfamiliar with the language.

However, once you have seen the movie, this list of five names will represent for you five people with five stories, occasionally overlapping, with five sets of earned emotions that you will experience vicariously through the eyes and the heart of Yasumoto.

You will live the stories with him.  You will feel the emotions with him.  You will learn and grow as a human being with him.

And your heart will be the better for it.

Somewhere towards the second half of the film you will discover that you are discovering love. Maybe again, but as if for the first time.

And you will say, This is what movies are for.