Red Beard is not an easy watch. Let me explain. The film, split into two halves, spans a duration of 180 minutes. But the length was never an obstacle. Set during the Shogunate of the 19th century, it takes time for you to settle into a world that is distant in every sense. Watching movies that originate from the west never seem difficult, given that shared ideologies percolate through the borders of each country. But Japan, as small as it may seem, is a world in itself before the intrusion of the west. But I don’t like to value experiences based on pleasantries. As Wilde says at some juncture, the experience takes precedence to the fruit of the experience. I was far from disappointed when Red Beard concluded.
Red Beard follows the life of Noboru Yasumoto, a young doctor, well versed in Dutch medicine, aspiring to be the Shogunate’s personal physician, finding himself pigeon-holed into some rut, as he deems it, in the countryside of Edo, the modern day Tokyo. He is to be the understudy of Kyojo Niide, or otherwise called Red Beard, for the difficulty that may arise in pronunciation of his birth name. The clinic that operates to tend to the poor is under his supervision, and we are shown the downtrodden state of Japan’s poorest.
I’m not going to typify the average viewer’s attention span, as I myself took a while to get accustomed to the descriptive, yet slow paced narration. Kurosawa takes his time to establish Edo. Mind you, Red Beard released in 1965, well ahead of the traditional Japan that we witness in the film. Even the native inhabitants of Japan would have to be bridged to their past. We understand that Yasumoto is enraged that he has been appointed to do menial tasks instead of aiding the Shogunate, and refuses to comply with Niide’s commands. He rebels, in the hope that he will be dismissed from service, but Red Beard does not pay heed to his petulant actions. He still wishes to reform him.
As I kept viewing, I began to realize how distinct and masterful Kurosawa is in envisioning things. The way he communicates a scene through only visuals is what makes him the great filmmaker that he is. For large parts of the film, there are no dialogues. Let me seek an example to shed light on this. Early on in a particular scene, Niide asks Yasumoto to observe the final moments of a dying man, stating that those are the most solemn moments in his long life. Yasumoto, unable to witness it, is relieved when he is called upon to operate on a young girl alongside Niide. Unable to process the grotesqueness of the operation, with the girl convulsing on the table, Yasumoto faints. Throughout both scenes, Kurosawa’s blocking amplifies the way you perceive the events. He manages to keep the girl and Yasumoto within the frame, and places Yasumoto in the centre, with both his aiding doctors on the side, while still having the girl within the frame. It’s masterful staging, merely because the grotesqueness of the scene never slips away. I’m afraid I can’t refrain from borrowing Wilde’s aphorisms, and as he states, the ugliness of things make them frighteningly real.
Something apart from his blocking that fascinated me was how he never smudges the illusion of scenes by cheaply infusing a cut. One of the scenes that had me on the hook was a single, long, uncut take when Yasumoto is confronted by a delirious woman who has been confined in a separate chamber constructed outside the clinic. As she begins to talk about her tormented past, the scene edges closer with each revelation, moving in from an initially wide shot, until we see both their faces. None of it required a cut, but in most modern films, directors and editors abuse cuts to build cheap, ineffective scenes. One may argue that it is insignificant, but, to an audience, it makes a worldly difference, subconsciously.
If I had to draw examples on his visionary style, I’m afraid I’d have to expound on each scene in the movie. But, what made me different to Red Beard was it was storytelling, within storytelling. It had characters talk about their lives, in a way that was narrating it. Sometimes, Kurosawa lets you have the conciseness of an image to aid you. Otherwise, he lets the characters speak or act out the events of the past. The latter is much more preferred when he wants you to see what it does to Yasumoto or Niide, who listen to these poor patients that have arrived at their door. Filmmaking is all about choices, and choices that don’t involve forethought often turn out to be poor ones.
But what fascinated me was the cultural set-up of an unscathed, medieval Japan. It is extremely fascinating to know that around the same time, the likes of Huysmans and other novelists were working on expanding the dimensions of artistic thought, while western medicine began to inculcate psychology as a more formal study, whereas Japan still relied on physiologists to tend to both body and mind. Their examinations do not involved structured studies to assess their patients mentally. They view them through the lens of commonplace citizens, and attribute their misfortunes to the plagues of politics and aristocratical profligacy. Japan’s poor were not merely poor, they were trampled on in every sense. They try to undo years of mental torture through ways that are instinctual and not systemic.
For the aspiring doctor in Yasumoto, the film is a passage of enlightenment. He takes the path of abolishing the notion that being a doctor is a comforting task, owing to his perception that his services would be limited to the Shogun. He understands that the stench of the poor has a reason, that their torn dresses are from labour and abuse, their coarse voices from eating nothing but the gruel that they are confined to eat, unlike the sake he can have at will. It is not through hardship does he learn, but through observation, slowly taking in the world he hadn’t known. He is aided by Niide, who teaches him what it means to be a doctor. It is merely beyond the task of tending to examination and administering medicine. It involves forming a tryst with those at your mercy, and to regard them with infinite pity and compassion.
There is an amazing passage right after the film opens for the second half. After rescuing a girl from a brothel, Niide places her in Yasumoto’s care. Kurosawa has spoken highly of classic literature, and holds Dostoyevsky in admiration, and the inclusion of this storyline is inspired from the author’s Humiliated and Insulted. We watch Otoyo, the young girl and Yasumoto form a relationship as, at first, he tends to her to alleviate her mental woes, before falling into illness himself, and in a reversal, Otoyo now tends to Yasumoto. The entire passage involves very minimal dialogue and at some points no dialogue at all. We observe actions, decisions and gazes but never does a tongue move. There is something truly profound in motion, than oration. I was able to indulge more and more in the second half of the film after soaking in this epoch throughout the first half. I was able to appreciate it better and was appeased by its storylines.
Is Red Beard philosophical? Kurosawa’s affinity is without doubt to Humanism and Existentialism. Without moving into conceptual definitions or saving it for another post, it was clear that the film is a commentary focused on vehemently admonishing spoilt riches and starved peasants. It tries to tell through its characters that, their actions in their lives give it meaning, more than their social standing. The decisions of a caretaker or the defiance of an emancipated daughter from her abusive mother, all involve characters trying to establish meaning to their own lives beyond their typified roles in society.
I had a sudden thought as to how my earlier viewings of Japan before its modern makeover compared to Red Beard. I had watched Silence, but that was through the eyes of the west. It had showed Japan in a mystical sort of way. But, such was the theme of that film. I had seen films on a transitioning Japan, as an imposing, dictatorial nation state. But, the humanist aspect of Japanese people themselves had revealed itself to me through this film. I do have memories of watching Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, but that seems distant, and I would most certainly love to watch it soon in this Director Focus series of the Japanese Master. Red Beard, apart from giving me a completely different cultural immersion, has helped me understand visual choices in a scene. It fascinated me and gave me thought than trying to appease me emotionally. I guess that would be due to my distance from this world, a world which I’m looking forward to explore.
Beyond Four Corners 