Akira Kurosawa
Dersu Uzala

Akira Kurosawa has a unique story: born in 1910, he grew up in a Samurai tradition family, receiving a very strict education from his father, a martial arts teacher, who obliged him to follow a daily routine starting with a one-hour march at dawn, followed by school of Kendo to the Shinto shrine, where an official was responsible for placing a stamp on a piece of paper to confirm that little Akira had gone there, ending in the evening with a private calligraphy lesson, which his father was also passionate about.

In his childhood, Akira developed an artistic, introverted, and reserved character, but with determination and application he slowly managed to carve out his own space and earn the respect of his peers, who after a few years at school stopped calling him by the nickname "konbeto-san", meaning "Mr. Jellybean", and accepted him to the extent of electing him class representative.

It was Heigo, Akira's older brother, who introduced the young man to the art of cinema. Heigo worked as a benshi, a musical commentator for silent films, and when the advent of sound cinema inevitably caused the benshi to lose their jobs after a futile association aimed at protest, Heigo, in a moment of loneliness and despair, took his own life.

The young Akira, who lived with him, was forced to abandon his studies and find a job. He responded to an advertisement for a position in a photography lab, where he came into contact with director Kajiro Yamamoto, and there began his journey as a filmmaker.

Dersu Uzala is a film born under special circumstances. It's 1970, and following the failure of his last film "Dodes'ka-den", the director fell into depression, even attempting suicide.

In 1975, after five years of inactivity, Kurosawa decided to return to work and did so with a film shot in hostile locations (the Siberian Taiga) and supported by an exceptional team spirit among the actors and staff.

Kurosawa's willpower and firmness of purpose permeate every frame of this film with a style that is at times dreamlike, yet with a coherent and solid narrative structure.

The film is based on the real story described in the travel diaries of Russian army topographer Vladimir Arsenjev, stationed on an exploratory mission in Eastern Siberia.

The story centers on the encounter between Captain Arsenjev and Dersu, a hunter from a nomadic tribe, left alone after a plague epidemic wiped out his family. Dersu will become the guide of the expedition, and will form a deep friendship with the military man.

Dersu is a man in his sixties, raised in the Taiga from which he derives the necessities for his sustenance. He moves and lives alone, but he is not a misanthrope or a hermit. Solitude does not seem to depress him, but when he has the chance, he knows how to cultivate human relationships, showing sharp wit, innate generosity of spirit, and respect for every phenomenon of Nature.

At this point, the comparison with another film comes to mind, which also deals with the theme of man's role and relationship with the wild. Sean Penn's "Into The Wild". The protagonist, based on a real person, is a young man who goes into the forest to escape a painful situation, abandoning his family without informing his parents and sister of his whereabouts. Of course, he knows nothing about how to survive in a hostile environment, and rejects offers of help from people along the way. A choice not far from suicide.

Dersu, like Chris McCandless, has chosen to live alone; he sleeps, hunts, eats, and travels alone. But unlike Chris, he has not forgotten men. He participates honestly and with total dedication in Arsenjev's military "mission", even telling him while they are lost in the steppe, desperately seeking direction: "I follow you, Captain, you know what's right". I don't think he really meant it; it seemed more a way of saying: "Alright, I'm coming with you; let's see where you lead me". And in the end, when they unsurprisingly reach a dead end with the onset of night, Dersu saves the captain from freezing by hastily building a shelter with reeds.

Dersu participates in the mission, but does not become a "guide", an army employee. He does it with the seemingly naive sole purpose of helping another man.

An absolute must-see film.