I was only able to watch two movies by Akira Kurosawa but they were both amazingly well done. The movies I watched were:
7 Samurai
Ran
7 Samurai was in black and white, but Ran was in color. You could really tell that Akira worked in black and white before based on the composition of the shots. He never relied on color to make a character read well or pop against a background. There is a specific scene where you are looking down on one of the main characters and he is framed by the ruined castle and basked in sun. He wears dark clothing so that he sticks out really well against the sunlit ground.
Akira also likes battle themed movies, both of which are japanese. He was very true to the culture and themes of japan and it was very interesting to see what the culture was like back then. Compelling story lines with a heavy cultural background are the backbone of Akira Kurosawa.
7 Samurai featured many different characters and wove them into a deeper storyline where they had to work together to try and protect a small rice village. Ran also featured many different characters and constantly switched between them. They all wove together by the end though.
Personally I think Akira has a tendency to be very dramatic and kill his characters off at the end. Almost everyone from 7 Samurai and Ran was dead by the end in some catastrophic battle. Ran's end scene was a 20min long gorilla samurai warfare onslaught, where 7 Samurai had the thieves attacking from all sides and breaking down the samurai's defenses.
Both very good, very well directed movies. I really like Akira's style of drama and engaging storytelling.
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