Waga Seishun ni Kuinashi (No Regrets for Our Youth)

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  May 21, 2008

  sanjurosamurai

  one of kurosawa's earliest films, this one has his characteristic great diologue and thoughtful presentation. this is one of my least favorite kurosawa films, it starts well and sort of loses something along the way and the film drags you through things unnecessary to the story....( read more) but it was still very good in most respects. when one of kurosawa's worst films could be this good, its just more evidence that he was a master filmmaker.

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  January 2, 2009

  alexroy69

  Première oeuvre "aboutie" de Kurosawa, qui en est encore au perfectionnement du style qui fera de lui une légende, No Regrets for Our Youth est la réaction du cinéaste au tumulte de la Seconde Guerre. Conçu entièrement, comme ses huit films suivants, sous le regard de la censure ...( read more)de l'occupation américaine, cette oeuvre n'en souffre toutefois que très peu, puisque ses valeurs pacifiques et sa dénonciation des atrocités auxquelles participa le Japon s'accordent parfaitement avec le message que les États-Unis tentent de véhiculer.
  
  L'histoire est assez simple: Yukie, une universitaire gâtée et égocentrique, tombe amoureuse de Noge, un étudiant activiste, qu'elle finit par épouser. Mais presque du jour au lendemain, l'homme est arrêté pour espionnage et meurt dans sa cellule. Détruite et désillusionnée, Yukie trouve refuge chez ses beaux-parents, cultivateurs pauvres et détestés des villageois, forcés de sortir seulement la nuit. Sous la tutelle de sa belle-mère qui lui fera endurer moult corvées physiques, l'étudiante trouvera un sens à sa vie dans l'entraide et les choses simples.
  
  À ma connaissance, No Regrets for Our Youth est le seul film de Kurosawa dont le protagoniste est une femme. Ce qui n'en fait pas pour autant une oeuvre féministe. Cependant, certains excès de sentimentalisme sont un peu lourds; Yukie verse des larmes, d'autres larmes, puis encore des larmes, en toute circonstance et parfois pour des raisons qui nous échappent. Il semble que Kurosawa ait voulu illustrer la fragilité féminine avec trop d'insistance et pas assez de subtilité. Toutefois, le jeu de Setsuko Hara (Yukie) est parfaitement dans le ton de l'oeuvre, et si celle-ci ne frappe pas avec autant de force que les classiques subséquents du réalisateur, elle demeure tout de même digne d'intérêt, ne serait-ce que pour admirer l'éclosion d'un style qui marquera à jamais le septième art.

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  July 10, 2008

  xmkatx

  Again, the development is really slow, but pays off in the end. One of the greatest movie titles. Ever.

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  May 14, 2008

  kurosawian

  Kurosawa's feminist film is expertly made with a very strong female protagonist. The epic scale of this complex story structure helps us understand the changes occurring in modern day (for the time) Japan. Compelling stuff.

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  May 4, 2008

  CForCinephile

  It'€™s difficult not to watch the early postwar cinema of Akira Kurosawa without thinking about it in reference to his later masterpieces. However, in No Regrets for Our Youth, it'€™s eerily facile to differentiate it from the mammoth accomplishments of Kurosawa's future. Firstly...( read more), and most obviously, it is the sole film of Kurosawa’s in which the camera takes on the perspective of a woman throughout its runtime. Secondly, Regrets cannot be said to deal with its issues with the emphasis on narrative movement and storytelling clarity which was a major aspect of films like Seven Samurai and Ikiru (even at their most emotionally inward moments). Indeed, this cannot be said to be simply Kurosawa testing out techniques and styles for later use; No Regrets for Our Youth is an accomplishment in its own right.
  What makes the film unique is its ability to visually externalize the conflicts, emotions, and ideas of its main protagonist, Yukie. At times, the acting of Setsuko Hara completes this task through the beautifully expressive facial gestures which are a major point of Kurosawa’s focus. One can track Yukie’s character arc from youthful ambivalence to hopeful outrage through close-ups alone. This style does speak to his later films though, as close-ups of his actors in general, but Takeshi Shimura especially, would become a hallmark of Kurosawa’s films. The cinematic techniques utilized in tandem with Hara's acting, though, only serve to increase the emotional conflict throughout the film. One of the scenes in which this is most noticeable is Yukie’s reaction to hearing that Nago was going to China. The shot of Yukie’s body pressed up against the door fades several times to illustrate her movement rather than concisely having her move. The effect of such a technique is that it frustrates attempts to quantify the issues faced by Yukie into temporal understanding. The fades remove our sense of time by getting rid of linear movement in a narrative which, in the hands of most filmmakers, would conform to our normal understandings about how emotion is illustrated to audiences. Several scenes like this one are sprinkled throughout the film (the movement of Yukie’s hands in the water corresponding to a piano, the words of others become the sonic center of the film, etc.) and ground the film in a first person style storytelling which seems much removed from the more objective style he would utilize in most of his films. Of course, the film's other aspects are also laudable; camera movement, story, and shot composition are just a few of the elements that come together to make the film great yet it is these certain scenes which make No Regrets for Our Youth special for me.

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  April 10, 2008

  thrusz

  This is the one that I was awkward with. I had no idea what happened at Kyoto. Heck, I have a history degree and I don't know anything about Japanese politics or Kyoto. Wikipedia didn't know anything about it either. Admittedly, Kyoto is not Britney Spears either...
  
  Watchi...( read more)ng this movie, you eventually find out that it is a union movie and has to do with the attention Communism gets after the second world war. Really, this is one of those films that really lives up to that "Post-War" banner that Eclipse put these movies under. But the interestnig, really good part of this movie is the weird love affair that happens in this film.
  
  That love interest drives this film. So while the first half borderline isn't great for non-post WWII Japanese people, the second half is absolutely riveting. The images of the woman working in the field are some of the best in cinema. The universal themes of alienation and bigotry ride high through this movie in an absolutely stellar form. It's really a shame that I was so turned off by the beginning of this movie.
  
  Kurosawa really seems to have a personal stake in this story. There's a disclaimer at the beginning of this movie that claims that the Kyoto events prove to be inspiration for this film, but it is still a work of ficiton. From what little I found about the subject matter, I call bullshit and I think that he just didn't want to be sued. I mean, this story just pulled a Dragnet and maybe changed the name to protect the innocent. There's allegory, there's metaphor, and then there's this. This is probably a direct adaptation of the real events with a love story thrown in.
  
  I have to reiterate how powerful the end of this movie is. I do like a catharsis for the character. Stagnant characters do little to nothing for me and I'm glad that there's some real power in this movie, despite (I keep saying it) the dull and beginning, I love the scenes in the mud fields. With the water flooding the harvest, I almost lost it. That was actually too much for me. Maybe I'm just becoming a schoolgirl in my old age. (Figure that one out.)
  
  At the end of the day, the movie is really pretty good, but then you have to tolerate all this intro stuff.

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• Akitake K?no
• Denjir? ?k?chi
• Denjirô Ôkôchi
• Eiko Miyoshi
• Haruko Sugimura
• Kokuten Kodo
• Setsuko Hara
• Susumu Fujita
• Takashi Shimura

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