The Idiot

Coming between the high points of Rashomon and Ikiru in the Kurosawa filmography is this powerful adaptation of Dostoevsky, one of the director’s favourite authors — and, he often acknowledged, one of the greatest influences on his own work (Kurosawa much admired Dostoevsky’s compassion and humanism). Kurosawa transposes The Idiot from 19th-century St. Petersburg to mid-20th-century Japan, but otherwise treats the novel with remarkable fidelity (too much so, in the view of some). The film is set on wintry Hokkaido, a northern island very near Russia. Masayuki Mori (the husband in Rashomon) plays holy innocent and epileptic ex-soldier Kameda, the film’s Prince Myshkin. Kurosawa staple Toshiro Mifune is worldly, wild-living Akama, the new friend who becomes Kameda’s rival for the tainted love of Taeko (Ozu regular Setsuko Hara), mistress of a wealthy man. “[The Idiot] has an undeserved reputation as a failure . . . The acting has an eerie, trance-like quality; and the perpetually snow-bound sets and locations, warmed by scarcely adequate fires and bulky clothing, together with a continually turbulent music soundtrack, make up the perfect expressionist metaphor for the emotional lives of Dostoevsky’s characters” (Time Out). “One sits transfixed . . . This is the best adaptation ever made of this novel and indeed of any of Dostoevsky’s novels” (Georges Sadoul). B&W, 35mm, in Japanese with English subtitles. 166 mins.