Monday, May 25, 2009

Kurosawa's One Wonderful Sunday


There has been a genre of cinema for a long time relating to couples going through changes, usually over the course of a day or two, such as in Murnau's Sunrise or the abysml Richard Linklatter-Ethan Hawke Before Sunrise,(One of my least favorite films but one of my favorite beach towels. Thanks Steveman) A setting of a day or a couple creates a significant dramatic structure. But Couple Changes Cinema can experiment with time like how Stanley Donan's Two for the Road compresses an entire relationship through jump cuts.

I became aware of another film of this genre by Akira Kurosawa. One Wonderful Sunday (1947) was his seventh film. It shows us Yuzo and Massaka out on their weekly date. They only have 35 yen between them.

Yuzo has allowed himself to be beat up. He is the veteran trying to make the change in a society in transition. Life and the quality of living plus lack of confidence has created an equation situation: Money and Love = Security. Thank god that Massaka is much more an optimist and willing to accept their current station in life. Not only are they limited by their funds, These too also encounter greed motivated folks that prevent them from optimizing their few precious yen at a concert or a coffee shop. In the end, money, of course, does not equate hapiness either, but they have to sweat and work hard to get to that point.

In One Wonderful Sunday, Kursosawa is visual poet trying the possibility of the cinema out. He was trying to figure out a way to put hope and change on the screen. One Wonderful Sunday is two kinds of film in one. The first half is kinetic full of tempo and mood changes. The couple remains in the city but there is a kind of picaresque road trip going on.

The second is not a dream but Kurosawa has certainly taken us to a world with a fantasy domain. And that is really the major conflict going on here. Will injected fantasy be the victor? And he gives them time to do it. There are some really long shots here in the second half. This is not a movie you want to be watching when you are sleepy.

One Wonderful Sundayis one of five films in the Criterion/Eclipse box set Postwar Kurosawa which features five of the eleven films that Kurosawa directed between 1946 and 1955.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:17 PM
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