Red Beard

Dir: Akira Kurosawa

1965

*****

Based on Shūgorō Yamamoto's short story collection, Akahige shinryōtan, Akira Kurosawa’s classic Red Beard is a tender tale exploring social injustice, exploring two of Kurosawa's favourite topics: humanism and existentialism. Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky was once again an inspiration to Kurosawa (after his 1951 adaptation of The Idiot) and his 1861 novel Humiliated and Insulted provided the source for a subplot about a young girl, Otoyo, who is rescued from a brothel. The film takes place in 19th century Koishikawa, a district of Edo which is the former name of the city of Tokyo. Young Dr. Noboru Yasumoto is our protagonist and we follow him as he arrives at a rural clinic he has been assigned to after leaving medical school. Trained in a Dutch medical school in Nagasaki, the somewhat arrogant Yasumoto aspires to the status of personal physician of the Shogunate, a position currently held by his father, a well-established, highly competent physician. Yasumoto believes that he should progress through the safe, and well-protected, army structure of medical education. However, for Yasumoto's post-graduate medical training, he has been assigned to the rural clinic under the guidance of Dr. Kyojō Niide known as Akahige (‘Red Beard’). Dr. Kyojō Niide (played by the awesome Toshiro Mifune) seems at first to be a tyrannical task master, but as the film progresses we learn he is a compassionate clinic director. Initially, Yasumoto is livid at his posting, believing that he has little to gain from working under Red Beard. Yasumoto feels that Dr. Niide is only interested in his medical notes and soon rebels against the clinic director. He refuses to wear his uniform, disdains the food and spartan environment, and enters the forbidden garden where he meets ‘The Mantis’, a mysterious patient that only Dr. Niide can treat. As he struggles to come to terms with his situation, the film tells the story of a few of the clinic's patients, which is a huge turning point in the film’s narrative. One of these patients is Rokusuke, a dying man whom Dr. Niide discerns is troubled by a secret misery that is only revealed when his desperately unhappy daughter shows up. Another is Sahachi, a well-loved man of the town known for his generosity to his neighbors, who has a tragic connection to a woman whose corpse is discovered after a landslide. However, Yasumoto’s only really takes off when Dr. Niide takes him along to rescue a sick twelve-year-old girl from a brothel (fighting off a local gang of thugs to do so) and then assigns the girl to him as his first patient. Through his efforts to heal the traumatised girl, Yasumoto begins to understand the magnitude of cruelty and suffering around him as well as his power to ease that suffering, and in doing so learns to regret his vanity and selfishness. Through his observations of Dr. Niide's compassion and a series of destitute patients, Yasumoto learns the true meaning of what being a doctor really means. The lives of patients are more important than wealth or status. Their sufferings can be ameliorated with compassion and conscientious care. The film is stunning, as you’d expect from the great Kurosawa, but alas, it was to be the last film he made with Toshiro Mifune after collaborating sixteen times together and it is also noted by Kurosawa purists as the last film he shot in glorious black and white. Mifune would typically appear in up to six or seven films a year at this point in his career but he chose not to do any that year as he filmed Red Beard, allowing himself to be fully immersed in what would be his last film for Kurosawa. Before filming certain scenes, Kurosawa would play the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, instructing the cast that this was how he wanted to audience to feel when watching this scene. The first scene of the film was one of these scenes and it set the tone for the rest of the film perfectly. It wasn’t just the direction and performances that are perfect, the attention to detail was also precise, with Kurosawa going as far as instructing the set builders to use the right kind of aged wood that would have been used in the region at the time the film is set for the hospital set and, in the further desire for authenticity, made sure the hospital was stocked with expensive medical supplies of the time period. The drawers that were never referred to or even opened on camera, were nevertheless filled with the correct pills of the time period. It makes Stanley Kubrick look like an amateur. It’s a stunning piece of cinema, a Kurosawa classic which is in truth, beyond most people’s definitions of a classic.