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PAULINE
KAEL
Yojimbo
is not a film that needs much critical analysis; its boisterous
power and good spirits are right there on the surface. Lechery, avarice,
cowardice, coarseness, animality, are rendered by fire ; they become joy
in
life, in even the lowest forms of human life. Life is so abundantly
lived that the whimpering, maimed and cringing are so vivid they seem
joyful; what in life might be pathetic, loathsome, offensive is made comic
and beautiful. Kurosawa makes us accept even the most brutish of his
creatures as more alive than the man who doesn't yield to temptation.
There is so much displacement that I don't think we have time or
inclination to ask why we are enjoying it; we respond kinesthetically.
I say "we" because it seems hard to believe that others don't share this
response. Still, I should remember Bosley Crowther with his
Ie•••
the
dramatic penetration is not deep, and the plot complications are many
and hard to follow in Japanese." And Dwight Macdonald, who writes,
"It
is a dark, neurotic, claustrophobic film ..." and, "The Japanese
have long been noted for their clever mimicry of the West.
Y ojimbo
is
the cinematic equivalent of their ten-cent ball-point pens and their
ninety-eight-cent mini-cameras. But one expects more of Kurosawa."
More? Movies are, happily, a popular medium (which makes it
difficult to understand why Dwight Macdonald with his dedication to
high art sacrifices his time to them), but does that mean that people
must look to them for confirmation of their soggiest humanitarian
sentiments? The prissy liberals who wouldn't give 'a man with the
D.T.'s a quarter for a shot ("He'll waste it on drink") are just the ones
who love the message they take out of
Ikiru,
which is often called
Kurosawa's masterpiece-that the meaning of life is in doing a bit of
goody good good for others. I have talked to a number of these people
about why they hated
The Manchurian Candidate
and I swear not one
of them can remember that when the liberal senator is killed, milk
pours out.
Y ojimbo
seems so simple, so marvelously obvious, but those
who are sentimental (like Macdonald) don't get it: they think it's a
mistake, that it couldn't have been intended as a comedy. It's true that
even Shakespeare didn't dare give his clowns hot blood to drink.
But Kurosawa dares.
The Apu Trilogy
has been widely acclaimed as a master–
piece, which indeed it is, though I would guess that in the years since
its release fewer Americans have seen it than have seen
David and Lisa
in any
week
since its release. Fewer have seen Satyajit Ray's new film,
Devi,
than have seen
David and Lisa
in any
night
since its release.
