Jonathan Lethem, a bestselling author and MacArthur Fellowship recipient, is often seen as a major figure behind the wildly popular genre called superhero movies. But that doesn’t make him an uncritical fan of modern superhero movies. In fact, his main gripe about those movies is that are so focused on testosterone and titillation effects that they leave the audience cold on the emotional aspects of heroes and villains, the very thing that decides whether a movie is alive or “dead on arrival”. Says Lethem: “I think one of the least satisfying film genres I’ve encountered is the contemporary superhero movie, which just seems to me kind of dead on arrival. I can’t even get into the hair-splitting about, ‘Oh, but there are three or four good ones.’ I just don’t see any life there.”
How can such lavish productions filled with so much action play out so lifelessly on the screen? Perhaps Akira Kurosawa (1910 – 1998), famed director of many classic action movies can show us the answer. Here is celebrated film-maker Martin Scorsese’s take on the magic of a Kurosawa action film:
“Every time I take a fresh look at Akira Kurosawa’s images, they shock me. It’s as if I’m experiencing them again for the first time. Now the same could be said of most great filmmakers. But in the very special case of Kurosawa, there’s a graphic, gestural power that can never become familiar – you can even feel it in the stills …Even if I catch myself anticipating the incredible moments in Ran (1985) where Tatsuya Nakadai (playing the warlord, Hideotora Ichimonji) stays motionless as arrows fly past him in both directions, or where the “ghost” appears in The Bad Sleep Well – and I don’t usually anticipate these moments because I’m always gripped by Kurosawa’s storytelling – they still astonish me. I look at them, I study them, and there’s always another layer, another mystery. For instance, in ‘Ran’, Nakdai isn’t just staying still, he’s holding himself still. Violently. Removing himself from reality. And he is suddenly, strangely fragile. And the movement of the arrows, the sound, the music, the way the cut to the image falls within the action of the battle, the color, the stylized look of Nakadai’s make-up … all of these elements harmonize to create an isolated moment, set disturbingly, and perfectly, within a greater work.”[1]
According to video essayist Lewis Bond, Kurosawa’s secret lies less in the action itself but more in getting the audience identify with the main characters and emote with the consequences that befall on them. If that requires shooting an agonizing death scene in slow motion, so be it. Pointing to The Seven Samurai, a 1954 Kurosawa action masterpiece, Bond says, “Action and emotion need not be separated by a chasm as they so often are (in modern superhero movies), and this is where the greatest of ‘Seven Samurai’ lies.”
How does Kurosawa do it even without the benefit of today’s computer-animation technology? Bond believes there are two things that define the master’s film-maker’s genius. First is Kurosawa’s skill in establishing the “geography of the plot”; each action scene recalls the character’s initial objectives and how those objectives are now being played out in the current battlefield. And secondly, the focus is on the consequence of an action, say in a sword duel or battle scene, rather than the action per se. To deliver impact, Kurosawa deftly employs slow motion for emotionally charged scenes such as the final moments of a victim as he is felled by an arrow or the sword. These techniques – establishing a clear plot geography and a focus on the emotional impact of actions – are humble compared to the flourish of CGI in superhero movies. But as Kurosawa’s films demonstrate so clearly, they have timeless relevance in the art of making great action movies, ones that transcend mere actions and communicate in every moment, a sense of urgency, exactly the quality missing in most superhero spectacles of today.
Notes:
[1] Martin Scorsese, in foreword to Akira Kurosawa: Master of Cinema by Peter Cowie, Rizzoli International Publications Inc., 2010.
WATCH: Snapshots of a Cinematic Masterpiece – ‘The Seven Samurai’ (1954)
Guide to 10 Essential Kurosawa Films: https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/akira-kurosawa-10-essential-films