01 Dec 10
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Japan
1950
88 min
Kurosawa’s epic samurai movies inspired such films as The Magnificent Seven, Star Wars and A Fistful of Dollars with their meticulously planned shots and expansive cinematography. This brilliantly executed early masterpiece is based on the challenging premise that truth can be subjective. The viewer witnesses the same incident four times from the points of view of different protagonists: a bandit encounters a samurai and his beautiful wife while travelling through a forest, overpowers the warrior and then seduces the wife. Each character (along with an eyewitness) sees the events differently and believes theirs to be the ‘true’ version of events.