Kurosawa

I enjoyed the Kurosawa unit more than I anticipated. It only credits him, that while half the time I had no idea what was going on, I was still interested.

I don't know if I would say RAN was my favorite of the three movies we watched in class, but I enjoyed it. I'm usually not a viewer who groans at a black and white movie, but I really liked seeing one of Kurosawa's movies in color. I thought it was interesting because I would have expected from a director who hadn't been creating films in color, to not really know how to use color to his advantage. In RAN though, Kurosawa used extremely vivid, and complimentary colors. He used red when it was appropriate, and darks, when they were necessary.
I also felt that in RAN, there was more emotion in the plot. I think it helped to have the family relations, because in the other two film I often felt confused on why they were doing what they were doing, or in Yojimbo, who was on what side, but I felt in RAN, that it was easier to tell who was against who, and who was supporting who. I also really appreciated how Kurosawa manipulated sound in the movie. I thought it was an intellegent artistic choice to make when he switched from non-diagetic to diagetic in the a scene where there is a lot of blood and gore, it made you able to concentrate on the emotions of the scene, instead of being distracted by all of the chaos.