In "Drunken Angels", the poor community doctor Sanada (Joe Shimura) tries to treat a sick young gang leader Matsunaga (Toshiro Mifune). Just before the filming of the film, Akira Kurosawa fished out a priceless treasure that was almost eliminated in the vast sea of people recruiting actors - Toshiro Mifune.
Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune
"Drunken Angel" is the first collaboration between Akira Kurosawa and Mifune, a pair of unparalleled CP in the history of the film, and the film also brings together Shinobu Hashimoto (screenwriter), Torujo (actor), and Fumio Hayasaka (soundtrack). Akira Kurosawa's golden film portfolio has since come out and reached its peak.
Looking back at the film, Akira Kurosawa's evaluation of Mifune was "unique" with a score of 120. Describing his performance as "clean and lissol, a sense of speed never seen in an actor in the past." Moreover, his delicacy and sensitivity are also very amazing. I rarely admire an actor, but I admire Mifune. ”
In particular, Mifune's film episode "Cuckoo Waltz" was filmed when Mifune wandered the black market with a sad heart, when Kurosawa's father died, but he could not get out immediately. He drank and walked aimlessly through the crowds of people on the streets of Shinjuku in frustration, and somewhere the song "Cuckoo Waltz" came from a loudspeaker.
In addition, Akira Kurosawa's evaluation of Yamamoto, mifune's sworn enemy in the film and Okada's actor, is extremely interesting: "Yamamoto's acting skills are also impeccable. That was the first time I'd seen such a sharp look. For the first time, I was terrified of his face-to-face conversations. But when I talked, I found that he turned out to be a very kind person. ”
The story of "Intoxicated Angel" is not complicated, but the tense performance of the characters in the film and the moral conveyed in the film's shots are extremely thick and resolute. It can even be said that on the level of allegorical, "Muddy Angel" is the most amazing thing in all the works of the black director.
The following is to understand the story with the relationship between the characters in the film, important sets, and the pictures repeatedly explained by the camera, to see the world in the eyes of the "drunken angel", and to enter his heart.
Poster for the movie "Drunken Angel"
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Kazunaga Sanada</h1>
In defeated Japan, Sanada (Joe Shimura) is a poor community doctor who has a hot temper but a warm and kind heart, the so-called knife mouth tofu heart.
He was an alcoholic, and he often drank alcohol with water. His fiery temper and habit of squirting without thinking are overwhelming, and he impulsively wants to die with the other party at every turn... I think this is one of the reasons why he is still unmarried and living with his old mother in his old age.
Sanada's sense of kindness and justice can be seen in his ability to take in and help women who are pestered and hurt by Okada, defying Okada's vicious threats. He is conscientious about his work, whether it is his careful advice to the sick student sister who appears from time to time in the film, or the evaluation of his colleagues, which can be explained. Even in the face of Matsunaga, the backbone of the gang who he had always looked down on and cursed for "polluting the world", he never gave up on healing.
Matsunaga (Toshiro Mifune), a middle-level leader of the underworld, young and handsome but unruly, he is also hot-tempered, and he is about to flatten the other party at every turn.
He is strong in the pain of the flesh, as can be seen from the unasthetized surgery at the beginning of the film. He thinks the gangs are remarkable, he smugly enjoys the "respect" in the streets and alleys, and he keeps talking about it.
He believed in underworld righteousness, which made the devastating blow to his heart when faced with the betrayal and abandonment of his boss, brothers and women far greater than the lung disease that could directly kill him.
Matsunaga is not a complete villain, and the doctor Sanada scolds him and pities him. When the woman taken in by the doctor is discovered by the fierce Okada, the seriously ill Matsunaga does not hesitate to step forward.
The doctor Sanada and the gangster Matsunaga, the relationship between the two is the surgical operation at the beginning of the story, and then it is found that Matsunaga has tuberculosis. Doctors demanded that he ban alcohol and women, and Matsunaga gradually switched from resisting to receiving treatment. However, when Matsunaga's gang elder brother Okada is released from prison, everything is accelerating towards the loss of control and getting out of control.
Every contact between the two will lead to conflict. Matsunaga first hid his illness and avoided the doctor and did not admit that he was sick, and then resisted the doctor's advice because of the gangster's self-esteem and rebellious mentality. At the same time, he also confuses the desire to survive in his heart with the fear of death, intending to counter the real fear in his heart through rigid statements and actions, and to save face and pride with health and even life.
Later, although he received treatment, the deteriorating situation made it impossible for him to escape. With his inertial loyalty, he still chooses to settle all problems in the rules and morals of the gangster system. This blind collective loyalty, the primacy of life, and the supremacy of faith are all metaphors for the value pursuits upheld by Japan during the militarist period.
Matsunaga was helpless, though he hesitated and struggled, just as he had questioned the rapidly expanding desires and ambitions. But militaristic thought ran over like a wheel, until the tragic defeat came to an abrupt end, and society turned back to face and heal.
And the doctor Sanada, who has worked tirelessly to treat the lesions of Matsunaga's body, has repeatedly proposed that the diseases in his heart - cowardice, extremism and irrationality, and the society that drinks dirty in the head is a fatal disease.
In front of the Sanada Clinic is a foul- and stinky pond that the camera focuses on many times, a muddy swamp that resembles Japan's post-war decadence, and the surrounding residents are constantly dumping garbage into it.
Doctors open clinics on the banks of this filthy swamp, and nearby residents, sunshine students, and gangsters are metaphors for the people who have experienced everything, the innocent suffering of young people, and those who have been swept into the center by the torrent. He was going to see a country that was in ruins, a people distorted by the great times.
Sanada and Matsunaga, the doctor and the gangster, these two characters are set up to express director Kurosawa's pain and criticism of the japanese nation's once extremely inflated ambitions and militaristic ideas, as well as finding a way out of decadence and mud.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > folk minor key and killing song</h1>
At the beginning of the movie, under the modern street lights, people with a rural atmosphere are gossiping. A young man next to the Matsuda Clinic was not skilled enough to play a folk minor tune with a guitar, night and night. This guitar, Dr. Matsuda didn't even know it was called a guitar or mind what it should be called. Just like other transformations brought about by Westernization, although they bring benefits and conveniences, they will gradually dissolve in people's habits.
The only time the whole film changes tone is when Matsunaga's boss Okada returns from prison. He grabbed the guitar hard and played a completely different tune. The young man who played the guitar was conquered on the spot and asked what kind of song it was. Okada said it was a song of murder. After that, the minor key that rises at the same time as the quiet night is no longer sounded, and instead of several scenes of Okada playing the song of murder contentedly in the second half of the film, as well as the contradictions and conflicts that continue to evolve and intensify.
One guitar, two tunes, which subtly allude to the introduction of Japanese Western culture and modernization, has influenced Japan's destiny. Friends familiar with Japanese history should understand that Japan before World War I was a fighting ground for various forces. With the advent of the Age of Great Navigation, the contenders accelerated their Westernization out of necessity, and it was able to gain a foothold and consolidate itself in the trade-off between various strata and forces.
Until the pre-war period in Japan, where centralized power was highly stable, the economy was developing rapidly, and the military forces were overwhelming in East Asia, the different forces that should have been in a position of separation and mutual scrutiny were all placed in the same torrent – militarism, aggression, and expansion.
This torrent is represented in Akira Kurosawa's films by tough, impulsive, violent, and systematic gangsters. When Okada plays the Song of Murder, the inflection is a force that dominates all the other overtures, subverting every syllable and melody that was originally in the folk minor, so that it no longer echoes every night after that. Since then, everything has gone in an uncontrollable direction.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > say goodbye to the mud pond</h1>
Matsunaga eventually died. When returning to the clinic, doctor Sanada meets a bar maid who hangs Matsunaga by the mud pond. The two looked at the muddy water and talked about Matsunaga and comforted their hearts.
The woman had always liked Matsunaga, and before Matsunaga died, she persuaded him to leave the city together, leave the strife, and return with her to her hometown, which was an idyllic life, where he recuperated, lived, and forgot all the past and the world.
But in the end, she failed to stop Matsunaga's last attempt and destruction. Although she felt that when she came up with the idea, Matsunaga listened carefully for the first time, and perhaps even cried.
The way women propose to rescue Matsunaga is like the escape, oblivion, and fantasy relief that Japanese society produces in the face of a tragic rout. And these cannot save the country, as weak as the woman's gentle whispers and veiled crying.
Doctors express very differently. He scolded loudly, and lifted a large stone of cunning, threw it into a pool of stagnant water, and then scolded him sonorously: the logic of these gangsters is to always make the wrong choice at the last moment, which is why they are so fruitless and unconsciously indiscriminately hurt the innocent!
Unlike women, doctors look directly at all facts, including all the sadness and hatred of Matsunaga, matsunaga's tough appearance hides the fragility and uneasiness of the heart, and the absurd idea of hiding diseases and avoiding medical treatment can only be self-deception.
The way for Matsunaga to truly recover is not to escape from the world, just as japan cannot return to the old system and nothing happens. Punishing the initiators and eliminating militarism and awakening people's self-cherishing hearts is the real countermeasure.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > doctor's admonition</h1>
At the end of the movie, the student's sister's illness is cured, the doctor warns her to live rationally, and then on their way to eat candy, the doctor hums a little tune: "We stand in a higher place and see the world farther away."
Maybe this minor tune is the doctor's prescription for the future of this country. After experiencing the disaster brought about by greed that has tormented generations, after many detours and losses, although people cannot return to the time before the lesions, they should still stand bravely at a new beginning, rather than following the waves of fate, and should look at the new world with great hope and do not forget their original intentions.
The doctor's admonition to the student sister is also Kurosawa's admonition to all those who live in the mud and pain:
"Face the problem, be humble, be self-disciplined, be sober. That is, live rationally. ”
Every inch feels life, and all the anger is beautiful
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