Kagemusha

I've just seen Kagemusha, directed by Kurosawa. Watching a Japanese film is a strange experience -it's not easy to engage with them, but some of Hollywood's most famous film's are heavily influenced by, and indebted to Kurosawa's. Indeed, Kagemusha has Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas as executive producers, and Lucas has made no secret of the fact that the Star Wars opus was influenced by Kurosawa's films, notably his 1958 film The Hidden Fortress.
Of course Kurosawa himself was indebted to western cinema and this is evident in Kagemusha. The sweeping, panoramic battle scenes are set to an score highly reminiscent of spaghetti westerns. I caught the final hour of A Few Dollars More on TV yesterday and experienced the strange sense that movie language is even more intermingled and intertwined than I had suspected. And I'm not the only one that thinks that the battle scenes in The Lord of the Rings trilogy owe a major debt to Kurosawa - I typed Kurosawa alongside Lord of the Rings into Google and was overwhelmed by an avalanche of articles and reviews making comparisons between them.
Anyway, I watched it on a rented DVD - we're advised not to post anything due to the 48-hour postal strike starting today, so I might just take the opportunity to watch it again after having read a little bit about it. Some of the scenes are so visually beautiful and arresting that I have to see them once more. Japanese films require a great deal of concentration, as, to be blunt, it's not always easy to work out who is who. But they offer a rewarding glimpse into a history and culture of which we are largely ignorant.
What marks out Kurosawa's films as exceptional, though, isn't just their visual spendour. It's their humanity and compassion. The fate of the common thief conscipted into impersonating the mortally-wounded warlord, Shingen, in order to deceive his enemies, is ultimately heartbreaking, desperately sad.
It's whetted my appetite for more - I'm ashamed to admit that I've never seen The Seven Samurai, so that's got to be next....