The Virtues of the “Other” Kurosawa
When we think of Japanese cinema, it is almost impossible not to call to mind Akira Kurosawa. We remember him above other classic figures such as Yasujiro Ozu, Kinuyo Tanaka or Kenji Mizoguchi; the more subversive filmmakers of the seventies and eighties such as Nagisa Oshima or Seijun Suzuki; or contemporary figures like Naomi Kawase, Hirokazu Kore-eda or Ryusuke Hamaguchi.
The name Kurosawa instantly brings to mind epic, transcendent films such as Seven Samurai (1954) and Ran (1985), more political and tragic works —Ikiru (1952), High and Low (1963), Dersu Uzala (1975)— or dreamlike epics full of colour —Kagemusha (1980), Dreams (1990)—; all of them by Akira Kurosawa. And yet he is not the only Kurosawa to have left an important mark on film history. There is an “other”, lesser-known Kurosawa who deserves our attention: Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
His career as a director began in the late seventies, but fame and recognition only came in the early nineties.
On the threshold of the new century he gave us Cure (1997), a masterpiece of psychological thriller in which Koji Yakusho —the gentle cleaner in Perfect Days (Wim Wenders, 2023)— plays a police detective investigating a serial killer who commits his crimes in a most peculiar way.
This film holds the core of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s particular way of looking at cinema and at the world. His films are heirs to two currents, two ways of seeing. On the one hand, he embraces and reworks the codes of genre cinema, above all horror, martial arts, and spy and suspense films. On the other, he draws on a critical cinema that reflects on the suffering and changes of our society and turns them into metaphor.
After Cure, Kiyoshi Kurosawa went on to direct other films reflecting fears about an alienated society pushed towards devastating depersonalisation. Serpent’s Path (1998), Charisma (1999) and the wonderful Pulse (2001) —a horror film in which new technologies take centre stage— are examples of this vision, brought to life through exquisite mise-en-scène and a masterful control of tempo, of pauses, of dilated time and of anguished frenzy when the story calls for it.
With films such as Tokyo Sonata (2008) and To the Ends of the Earth (2019), Kurosawa turns his gaze to everyday life, though always with a captivating, reflective technique that questions our most deeply rooted daily habits.
Today, with the experience, caution and maturity of a true craftsman of cinema, he remains drawn to this way of thinking about the present-day world, as in his recent Chime (2024) and Cloud (2024), closer in style to horror and the thriller.
Which brings us to his latest work, El samurái y el prisionero (2026), in which Kurosawa has set himself (and us) a new challenge: transporting his concerns and ways of storytelling to medieval Japan, specifically to the Sengoku period, in the year 1578. Even so, we can be quite sure this film will prove more timely and timeless than we might imagine.
The story follows the alliance between a feudal lord and one of his prisoners as they try to uncover who is behind a series of inexplicable crimes, while facing one of the most dangerous clans in all of Japan. With this mysterious, intriguing premise —reminiscent of the alliance between Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991)— Kiyoshi Kurosawa sets out to immerse audiences in a surprising plot where nothing is as clear as it seems.
With influences as evident as Seven Samurai and Harakiri (Masaki Kobayashi, 1962), El samurái y el prisionero is a film of action and intrigue, mature and poetic, that has dazzled directors as towering as Martin Scorsese and is sure to leave no viewer indifferent.
From 23 October at CineCiutat.
Guillem Amengual Jaume