\u201cWhat makes for good movies is a plot driven forward progressively through things that actively happen,\u201d the 71-year-old director says recently over Zoom from his home in Tokyo, using a translator. \u201cAudiences need to be drawn to this idea of: What will happen next?\u201d<\/p>\n
His fans don\u2019t necessarily get an explanation for the unease Kurosawa sometimes generates, but it\u2019s part of the draw. That mindset has made him a horror maestro for over three decades. Outside that genre, he enjoys a reputation for being an acutely psychological chronicler of contemporary anxieties, as in his award-winning 2008 drama of job loss and family secrets, \u201cTokyo Sonata.\u201d<\/a> <\/p>\n Now, though, Kurosawa has not only made his first film set prior to Japan\u2019s modernizing Meiji era \u2014 a category of feudal period dramas known as jidaigeki \u2014 but an old-fashioned murder mystery to boot, complete with solutions to satisfy the most die-hard Agatha Christie reader.<\/p>\n Masahiro Motoki in the movie \u201cThe Samurai and the Prisoner.\u201d<\/p>\n (Janus Films)<\/p>\n \u201cThe Samurai and the Prisoner,\u201d which Kurosawa adapted from Honobu Yonezawa\u2019s acclaimed 2021 novel (it recently premiered at Cannes), unfolds during the fractured Sengoku period in the 16th century, the same era as one of his favorite jidaigekis, \u201cThrone of Blood,\u201d directed by his unrelated namesake, Akira Kurosawa. In a besieged mountainside castle, rebellious Lord Murashige (Masahiro Motoki), trying to consolidate disparate clans of warriors, engages in a battle of wills with his nemesis\u2019 emissary, Kanbei (Masaki Suda), whom he\u2019s imprisoned. But when a succession of murders threatens to undermine his leadership, Murashige turns to his crafty hostage for help.<\/p>\n The result, broken up into seasons and marked by an impending sense of doom, is a multipart puzzle box as intricately folded and tucked as the traditional clothing on display. But it\u2019s also a savvy, deliberative portrait of leadership in a fractured time, with a unique takeaway: Knowing oneself is as essential to the job as knowing who one\u2019s friends and enemies are.<\/p>\n Kurosawa had always wanted to make a jidaigeki \u2014 the furthest he\u2019d ever gone into the past was his World War II film \u201cWife of a Spy\u201d<\/a> \u2014 and yet creating one from scratch sounded too difficult and expensive. But the book\u2019s scenario of a put-upon samurai leader compelled to unravel a series of puzzles to keep his castle\u2019s unity appealed to his taste in a particular crime-solver: someone representing a wider system of responsibility and codes, rather than the classic American private eye.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m drawn to police detectives, not private detectives,\u201d he says, pointing to the duty-bound, badge-wearing protagonist in \u201cCure,\u201d a Criterion-anointed classic now held in the same pantheon of serial killer tales as \u201cSeven\u201d<\/a> and \u201cManhunter.\u201d<\/a> <\/p>\n \u201cPolice are part of an organization, with orders from above that make them responsible for figuring out the crime. If they could, they\u2019d love to live their life peacefully without conflict, but they can\u2019t because of their profession.\u201d He considers his disinterest in gumshoes working on their own a quintessentially Japanese perspective. \u201cWhy try to solve a mystery and in the process end up in all these horrible situations, when you can just quit?\u201d he asks with a wry smile.<\/p>\n Masaki Suda in the movie \u201cThe Samurai and the Prisoner.\u201d<\/p>\n (Janus Films)<\/p>\n In \u201cSamurai,\u201d Murashige hews closer to someone overwhelmed by responsibility. Says Kurosawa, \u201cMurashige is neither a police or private detective. It\u2019s that he is in a minor position of power, but to maintain order, he must let go of that power to solve the mystery. It\u2019s not curiosity leading him. The chain of mysteries is a trial he must go through.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a gauntlet made thornier whenever Murashige, who believes in mercy over violence, engages with Kanbei, chained in a dungeon but with a dangerous mind nonetheless. \u201cIn that era, hierarchy was incredibly important, very visible,\u201d says Kurosawa. \u201cIf one person is standing, the rest must be kneeling. With Kanbei and Murashige, there is always a shifting of the power, and when they begin to see eye to eye, suddenly we don\u2019t know who holds the power.\u201d<\/p>\n To play the wily Kanbei, Kurosawa enlisted his young \u201cCloud\u201d star Suda, whom he calls a genius. Directing Suda was its own destabilizing experience, he says.<\/p>\n \u201cHe had an almost demonic, devil-like quality and it was hard to tell if the lines he was saying as Kanbei were truths for the character or complete lies \u2014 or if he didn\u2019t know,\u201d recalls Kurosawa. \u201cIt was mesmerizing to me, his words becoming something that we increasingly can\u2019t trust.\u201d<\/p>\n His interest in Murashige, meanwhile, a real-life tactician fictionalized here as an under-the-gun leader presented with myriad problems, poses the question: Did Kurosawa make a film about directing films? \u201cI never thought about that, but that might be,\u201d he considers. \u201cI\u2019m constantly having to ask things of people, ordering people around, sometimes negotiating. But filmmaking is something I love. There are times when I wish I could escape those scenarios, but I can\u2019t. I\u2019m always held back by that sense of responsibility. That\u2019s how I\u2019ve been working for decades. It\u2019s the first time I\u2019m probably saying that out loud, but the various contradictions I hold within myself as director are reflected in Akira Murashige.\u201d<\/p>\n Yuriko Yoshitaka, left, and Masahiro Motoki in the movie \u201cThe Samural and the Prisoner.\u201d<\/p>\n (Janus Films)<\/p>\n Kurosawa is a late bloomer as an auteur. His breakthrough, \u201cCure,\u201d hit Japanese theaters when he was 42. But he\u2019d been directing features since 1983, first, Japan\u2019s homeground adult movies called \u201cpink films,\u201d then, in the 1990s, direct-to-video yakuza gangster films known as \u201cV-cinema.\u201d (That\u2019s \u201cV\u201d as in video.)<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a good training ground,\u201d he remembers. \u201cThey had to be under 90 minutes, had limited shoot days, had to use certain actors, had to have scenes with yakuza. I learned that when you keep to the constraints you\u2019re given, there\u2019s also a kind of freedom. I had no personal interest in yakuza but I had to think: What\u2019s the most unique yakuza I could come up with?\u201d<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1785413534_216_.jpeg\")
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