Dodes'ka-den Reviews

Back in the 90’s, I had the pleasure to discover Akira Kurosawa’s movies and I became overnight a huge fan of his work. Of all his movies I have seen so far, this must be the most underrated coming from this director but it is definitely one of the best he has made, at least, as far as I’m concerned. Indeed, I think it is an amazing movie dealing with the slums in Japan and, even though it might sound weird, I really loved its bleak and realistic approach. Indeed, all his famous samurai features such ‘Rashomon’, ‘Yojimbo’ and ‘Shichinin no samurai' were of course pretty awesome but I think it was really neat to see this director working on something contemporary. Unsurprisingly, even though the Japanese master had some big expectations, this movie turned out to be a big box-office failure which isn’t really surprising considering its massive depressing tone. At the time, Kurosawa was already struggling and the blow was so huge at the time that he even attempted suicide. Anyway, coming back to our main feature, to conclude, even though it is usually considered as a minor effort in Kurosawa’s stellar career, I think the whole thing was actually quite mesmerizing and I think it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in this director.