CHARLES CHEUNG'S BLOG

A master filmmaker with an eye for darkness and complexity

By Richard Corliss

In 1951, when knowledge of Japanese for many people was still limited to "sayonara" and "hara-kiri," a movie from the country won top prize at the Venice Film Festival, and two more Japanese words entered the common language: Kurosawa and Rashomon.

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Venice [5venis] 威尼斯(意大利港市)

sayonara <日>再会,再见

hara-kiri <日>切腹自尽

Kurosava  黑泽明

Rashomon 罗生门（电影）

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For nearly a half-century, Akira Kurosawa reigned supreme as the emperor of Japanese, indeed Asian, cinema. He was also a prime mover in explaining his country to a world in which Japan's wartime cruelty was still very much a fresh memory. Rashomon, in which four people (one of them a ghost) tell conflicting versions of an encounter between a married couple and an outlaw, counseled against making snap judgments about any individuals (or, for that matter, nationalities). A philosophical debate in the guise of a melodrama, the film argued that everyone has their motives—some venal, some fearful, all complex. And behind them was one cardinal sin: what Kurosawa called "the pathetic self-defense of the ego."

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reign 统治, 支配, 盛行, 占优势

supreme 极度的, 极大的, 至高的, 最高的

counsel[5kaunsEl] n.讨论, 商议, 辩护律师 vt.劝告, 忠告

snap v.猛地吸住, 突然折断, 使劈啪地晌, 猛咬 n.猛咬, 突然折断, 劈啪声 adj.突然的

guise n.外观, 姿态, 装束, 伪装 v.伪装

melodrama [5melEdrB:mE]  n.情节剧

venal [5vi:nl] 贪污的

cardinal n.枢机主教, 红衣主教 adj.主要的, 最重要的

sin n.[俗] 违背习俗, 不合情理之事, 过失, 罪过, [数学] 正弦函数

pathetic 可怜的, 悲惨的

ego [5i:^EJ] 自我, 利已主义, 自负

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While films by other Japanese masters, like Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi, emphasized the quiet, quotidian aspects of life, Kurosawa's had a greater vigor, a faster pulse and a shorter fuse, embodied by his wonderfully feral star, Toshiro Mifune. They were also the first by a major director to aestheticize the subject of violence—witness the trotting dog with a severed hand in its mouth in Yojimbo, or the deadly arrows that turn Mifune into a human piñata in Throne of Blood. The West took appreciative note of Kurosawa's potent mix of machismo and storytelling, giving him three Oscars (one for lifetime achievement) and remaking four of his films—Rashomon, The Seven Samurai, Yojimbo and The Hidden Fortress (which George Lucas said was an inspiration for Star Wars). That was a fitting tribute to the Tokyo boy who grew up avidly watching American Westerns, and who, on a film set, would proudly sport the sunglasses and the cloth hat that were given to him by sagebrush director John Ford.

Japanese audiences, on the other hand, considered Kurosawa's work entirely too Western. Studios grew tired of financing his big-budget spectacles, and Kurosawa's career may well have ended in the '70s if Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg had not stepped in to sponsor Kagemusha and Dreams. Granted, the great director, who died at the age of 88 in 1998, might have considered making himself more understandable to audiences in his own country, but to Kurosawa life and action were nothing if not complex.

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quotidian [kwEu5tidiEn]adj. 每日的, 每日发作的, 平凡的, 日常的 n.日发虐

vigor 精力, 活力

fuse n.保险丝, 熔丝 v.熔合

feral [5fiErEl]野生的, 未驯服的, 凶猛的, 野兽的

aestheticize

aesthesis[es5Wi:sis] 感觉

aesthete [5i:sWi:t, 5esWi:t] 审美家, 唯美主义者

aesthetic [i:s5Wetik] 美学的, 审美的, 有审美感的

aesthetical [i:s5WetikEl] 美学的, 审美的, 有审美感的

aesthetically  审美地, 美学观点上地

aesthetician [7i:sWi5tiFEn] 审美学家

aestheticism [7i:s5WetisizEm] 唯美主义

aesthetics [i:s5Wetiks] 美学, 美术理论, 审美学, 美的哲学

aesthetism 唯美主义

witness

trot (使)小跑, (使)快步走, 骑马小跑, 疾走

severed [5sevE] 切断

potent 有力的, 有效的

tribute 贡品, 礼物, 颂词, 殷勤, 贡物

avidly 贪心地, 热心地

sunglasses 太阳镜；墨镜

sagebrush [5seidVbrQF] 山艾树

granted  

machismo [mB:5tFi:zmEu]  男子气概

spectacle 观览物, 展览物, 公开展示, 奇观, 景象, 光景

a pair of spectacles 眼镜

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