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The Idiot

The Idiot (1951)

May. 23,1951
|
7.2
| Drama Romance

Kameda, who has been in an asylum on Okinawa, travels to Hokkaido. There he becomes involved with two women, Taeko and Ayako. Taeko comes to love Kameda, but is loved in turn by Akama. When Akama realizes that he will never have Taeko, his thoughts turn to murder, and great tragedy ensues.

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Exoticalot
1951/05/23

People are voting emotionally.

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Intcatinfo
1951/05/24

A Masterpiece!

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Ava-Grace Willis
1951/05/25

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

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Cheryl
1951/05/26

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

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TheLittleSongbird
1951/05/27

Not a bad film at all by all means, but considering that it was directed by Akira Kurosawa, one of the greatest directors of all time, and based on a novel by one of the great novelists of the 19th century Fyodor Dostoevsky it was a bit of a let-down.The Idiot's biggest problem was the extensive cutting, originally intended to be a 266-minute long film and very faithful adaptation it was cut by one hour to Kurosawa's outrage, and the problem is that this interference quite badly shows. The first half felt rather fragmented and erratically paced, jumping around so much with things starting and ending very abrupt;y that it was not always easy to follow (and it would have been even more so if I was not familiar with the source material already) and character motivations rather confused and irrational. Luckily the second half does calm down significantly and the drama more linear. The dramatic scenes do get a bit overwrought and pedestrian in pace and the cutting robs them of the depth and detail that would have made them better.Some have said they found the performances weird and off-kilter, for me they were mostly decent if nowhere near among top-tier Kurosawa standard. Those adjectives that said do apply to the performance of Kurosawa regular Toshiro Mifune (and to a lesser extent Setsuko Hara), a fine actor but he overacts quite wildly here and it does hurt the tone of the film as well as being very unlike his usual standard of performing. As an adaptation, it does come up short, not just how the film was treated but also with how little of Dostoevsky's style comes through, the philosophical, social and literary meanings almost completely stripped and overshadowed by the soap-opera-ish melodrama that the sometimes thought-provoking but also a little heavy-handed and disjointed script.However, Masayuki Mori carries the film solidly in a sensitive and wisely underplayed performance, and Setsuko Hara brings a moving dramatic intensity to hers, although like Mifune some of her delivery is a little over-egged. Takashi Shimura can also be relied on to give a great performance. Kurosawa directs with his usual technical brilliance and command of the story, the cutting disallows his style to shine even more but he does a solid job (seeing his calibre as a director however one does expect something more than that). Despite the treatment the film got, which stopped it from being the faithful adaptation it was intended to be, it doesn't completely disgrace the novel at all even with the updating, setting change and that it feels more lesser Kurosawa than a novel by Dostoevsky. The basic story, apart from a large gap where it really does feel like an hour was cut out and of course not enough of Dostoevsky's style, is here, even if not used to its full potential (a lot of it is introduced and then treated in an on-the-surface way) and the story does transfer to the culture of post-war Northern Japan reasonably well.The music score is hauntingly beautiful and hair-raising, and the settings and costumes are authentic and strikingly detailed. But the best asset (and the only really exceptional one) is the cinematography, the best parts absolutely exquisite and astonishingly vivid and almost on par with the production values of Kurosawa's best work. All in all, largely uneven and disappointing film with some impressive elements, if left uncut it would definitely have been a much better film. 5/10 Bethany Cox

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Martin Bradley
1951/05/28

Kurosawa's screen version of Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot" runs for almost three hours and yet it still feels under-nourished and more than a little confusing. I'm not sure up-dating it and transferring the action to post-war Japan was such a good idea. The romantic entanglements that make up most of the plot are not only hard to follow but are overtly melodramatic and not in a good way, nor is it helped by the distinctly off-kilter performances of most of the cast, (Mifune, in particular, goes way over-the-top). Shot in grim monochrome in a snow-covered Okinawa, it's also a distinctly ugly-looking picture and as literary adaptations go, this has to be considered something of a misfire.

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zetes
1951/05/29

Yikes! Most of my least favorite Kurosawa flicks before this one were quite a distance above mediocre. I think my least favorite had been Dersu Uzala, which is pretty forgettable, but has its moments (the building of the hut to shield from the wind in particular). The Idiot is by a vast chasm Kurosawa's worst film. Part of this is not his fault. His original cut ran four hours plus, while the studio's released version runs less than three. The story, based on Dostoyevsky's novel, feels chopped to bits. I think I got the gist of it by the end, but it's only barely comprehensible by itself. Perhaps the film stands decently if you've read the source material. However, there is plenty of legitimate criticism of what we do have to justify calling it Kurosawa's worst anyway. This material just doesn't fit Kurosawa's talent. He always has a penchant for melodrama, and that works fairly well in the historical films, as well as his crime films. In fact, in every other film I've seen from him it has worked at least okay. Here, it feels hopelessly misplaced. The set-pieces are so over-performed and even over-directed that they become painful to sit through. Of course, it might help if I knew what the heck was going on. About the only real piece of interest is Ozu's muse Setsuko Hara playing a rather nasty woman, a femme fatale of sorts. It's kind of playing against type, and she does a pretty good job. I can't say I feel the same for Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, or the film's star, Masayuki Mori.

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yippeiokiyay
1951/05/30

One of Kurosawa's least-seen films is "The Idiot". The film is set in Hokkaido, the northernmost area of Japan. Deep snow covers the earth, and is shoveled into barriers, seeps in through the ruins of a warehouse in great drifts, piles up against the windows in crescents, howls fiercely as Toshiro Mifune's character and Matsayuki Mori's "Prince Myishkin" step foot off a train into a blizzard.Dostoevsky's great novel is the resource material.The Prince Myishkin character is Christ-like in the novel, and, as transplanted to Japan may be seen as a Boddhisatva-like character (an Avalokiteshvara or Kanon-a saint of compassion). Matsayuki Mori does an amazing job of portraying a damaged but compassionate soul..one that feels deeply the pain of those he encounters, and who speaks the truth simply, with a pure heart and an awareness of suffering. In one scene, he holds Toshiro Mifune's face between his small, gentle hands, and there is such a tender sensibility, his hands seem to communicate love and absorb the pain of Mifune's character. It is a breathtaking moment.Toshiro Mifune is brilliantly cast as the thuggish suitor who vies with Mori for the soul of the beautiful and doomed Taeko Nasu character played with uncharacteristic drama by Setsuko Hara.This complex, rich, layered, frightening, deeply disturbing film has been under-appreciated from the outset-beginning with the studio, which cut the film drastically (Kurosawa was outraged! *see trivia). Japanese audiences didn't understand or like the film, and other audiences have found it weird. Some of this relates directly to Donald Richie's seminal work on Kurosawa and his conclusion that "The Idiot" was a failure. Unfortunately, Richie's conclusion seems to have put replaced the nails in "The Idiot's" coffin with screws. It's very hard to pry open the film.Sure, it is a weird film...that's what is so interesting. Kurosawa has made one of the most powerfully strange films, while stretching the range of his actors (have you ever imagined you would see Setsuko Hara like this? She's terrifying in her desperation and pain!) giving the scenes a grounded reality, and allowing us to enter into the lives of these tragic, doomed souls.This is one of the finest films of world cinema, although one of the least-viewed.

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