Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

In one of the most poetically and visually beautiful films ever made, DERSU UZALA (1974) is a lesser-known masterpiece of Akira Kurosawa. Like all great art, it’s interpretation and message, is up to the viewer. The film is unforgettable.

The movie took two years to film. It was filmed on location in Siberia, and its primary language is Russian. It is a unique collaboration between two nations and cultures, especially during the turbulent 70’s. The social themes of the movie are numerous, and the implications are universal to all humanity. The theme of man against nature provides the background for the movie, but the movie is much more than that. The film is art.

KUROSAWA

This Japanese director, best known for his “Samurai Series” was a genius in the film media. Schooled in Western literature, he brought “Shakespeare” to Japan,(literally, in two movies, RAN (King Lear) and Throne of blood(Macbeth) He staged classic tragedies in the western tradition, set within the complex history of feudal Japan. If his films were either WESTERN or EASTERN , either one or the other, they would not be the work of a genius, but only the work of a skilled craftsman. In fact, Kurosawa’s films were always more popular in the west than in his native land. What makes this man a genius was that even within the complex and foreign cultures in which he sets his work; there is an unmistakable common humanity. His works transcends time and culture, and becomes art.

In his personal life, Kurosawa's career had hit a low point. This is thought to be directly related to losing his job as director for the Japanese segment of TORA! TORA! TORA! with Hollywood’s allegations that he was mentally unfit, which hurt his reputation and pulled his financial backing. When he did get backing, for a movie about the Tokyo slum (his first in color) it was a spectacular financial flop. His failing career and failing health led to depression, and prompted a suicide attempt DERSU UZALA is the first film he made after his suicide attempt. It was only his second color movie, and it is glorious color, in every frame. It also is a remarkable come back, although Kurosawa never completely recovered from his low point in the seventies. The movie won several awards, including an Academy Award, for “Best Foreign Language film": His next film KAGEMUSHAwas bankrolled by George Lucas, and Francis Ford Coppola, two ardent admirers of Kurosawa.

It is one of my long-term goals to see and own all the films made by the master. Of the ones I have seen and remember, the overriding element for me was a sense of being human, from the tiniest faults, up to the grandest acts of bravery and self –sacrifice. Watching Kurosawa’s films is like viewing a long series of brilliant gesture paintings, each stopping an expression in mid performance, and holding it there for us to see. If it is a story, it will be a good one. If it is a character study, the character will be rich and the experience rewarding.

To accomplish film as art, Kurosawa was a technical genius, innovating camera angles, filming action from several views, using close-ups sparingly and always effectively. He was able to generate a complex world within the life of the film. The environment, for Kurosawa was never one-dimensional. And it was never without texture, and abundance of detail, and never taken for granted. Impressive in this movie are the powerful sweeping views of nature in its most terrible aspect, in over-powering winds, snowstorms, and raging rivers. In other scenes, the sound of a twig breaking is the only sound that breaks through the utter peace and tranquility offered.

This particular film, not done in Japanese or dubbed in English, has that same universal appeal, that is the essence of Kurosawa’s genius to me. DERSU UZALA is itself a proof of Kurosawa’s ability to touch on our common humanity, with a film so breathtakingly beautiful, that it becomes unforgettable. I haven’t tried but I suspect you could watch this movie without subtitles, and still understand what was going on. The action, and the plot are as clear as a 1st grade primer. What you can’t know until you SEE the film is what it says to YOU!

THE PLOT **SPOILER ALERT**

The story is simple, and I am going to give you the entire broad outline except for the very end. Remember it is not the story, but how it’s told, that is critical. The movie is based on the journal by novelist Vladimir Arseniev. The themes that I have been able to identify will be included here.

The year is 1910, and a well-dressed Russian is looking for an unmarked grave, placed three years previously, before the thriving settlement came into being .The rest of the story, is his remembering.

1902
“Please to not shoot! Me are People!” (Dersu to soldiers) MAN VERSUS NATURE

Captain Arseniev and a small group of boisterous Russian soldiers are in the Siberian Wilderness, their assignment to make a topographical survey of the land. They are uncomfortable and ill at ease in their unfamiliar environment. Out of the night, while they brood and muse in the eerie light of the campfire, comes a little man, short of stature, round of countenance and ancient of years. He identifies himself as Dersu Uzala, a member of a nearly extinct native tribe of “Goldi”, who makes his living in the woods, by hunting. The soldiers don’t know what to make of the little man, who allows a stag he is hunting, to escape unhurt, talks to the fire, and doesn’t know how old he is. He once had a family, killed by smallpox. But Areseniev, intrigued, hires him as a guide.

The theme serving as background in the film is the threatening wilderness, and civilized men trying to describe it by charting. Dersu serves as a spiritual as well as physical guide in the wilderness, at first identifying himself as a man, yet also identifying himself with the forest.

“Rice, salt, matches …give some. Other people come, find food, not die” HARMONY AND BALANCE

“Everything is men” (Dersu to the soldiers)

When they stop to camp, Dersu has them leave the place as they found it and leave food for the next person who might need it The group gets more impressed by the day, at the little guide who knows when the rain will stop, can read tracks like a book, and seems to speak with all the elements. When Dersu Uzala says “men” he isn’t always speaking of human men. His view of nature is intensely personal and personified, almost pantheistic. His view of life is that everything has life, and a soul, including the fire, the water, each animal and the sun.

COMPASSION, and FRIENDSHIP

“Captain. Over there my wife and kids die” (Dersu to Arseniev)

An intense personal friendship develops between the little guide and the captain, and it appears to be mutual. The Captain learns many things about neuter, and man’s relation to it. Dersu Uzala has a friend, and someone to teach, the ultimate gift of knowledge to share. The captain gives him compassion, support and understanding, touching him in his loneliness. He is able to mourn the loss of his family, so many years ago.

AGING

“Old man walk only on his heels” (Dersu as he talks about the tracks he has found)
In their journeys, they meet an old Chinese, who has been a hermit in the forest for 60 years, over the loss of his love to his brother. The old man sits there brooding, unable to speak, when civilization comes upon him in the guise of Russian surveyors. He then decides to return from whence he came, and leaves the forest. This action will be prophetic, and symbolic for the rest of the movie. The old man is clearly an allegory for man’s loneliness, and his need to be returned before he dies. It is also an allegory for the forest itself, and nature, that will be forever changed by man. As the old man bows in respect before the captain, something is lost forever.

THE DANGER IN THE WILDERNESS (and a debt) “ Cut grass..or we die”

As the team goes to survey a lake, only Dersu and the captain go to the far reaches, a vast, silent and forbidding wilderness. The wind comes up to obscure their tracks, and they are lost somewhere on spits of ice in the midst of the lake. While the compass can point to the direction they came from, it cannot show them the way out of this predicament, a safe trail over the ice, interspersed by running streams in the midst of the ice flow. Dersu says to survive they must cut grass, as fast as possible. They do this, and a fierce wind howls, while they work frantically. The setting sun becomes a menacing symbol of futility, a witness to their defeat. The captain collapses. The next morning he finds himself safe and warm, in a covering of grass carefully built by Dersu, who saves his life. This is an amazing, powerful and moving sequence.

“Goodbye military men” (Dersu to soldiers) The Beginning of Disharmony

The surveying teams and Dersu Uzala survive hunger, and brave the wilderness, and survive that season. Dersu goes back to his life in the forest to hunt and trap, and the Captain returns to the city. to his family, and to civilization. He invited the little man to come home with him, but Uzala is more comfortable in the forest. There is a subtle clue here that I almost miss. Uzala asks for cartridges to go a kill sable, for money. “Me bad man” It is breaking his own rule of balance and harmony in the forest, but he goes to make his fortune.

1907 “You are my dear man”. (Captain to Dersu)

The survey team again braves the Siberian Wilderness, a different group accompanying Arseniev in his task this time. For a while, the captain hears nothing of his old friend, but when they do meet, it is a joyful reunion. Dersu did well with his sable hunting, only to be cheated by a rich trader, clearly not wise to the ways of the world. He shrugs and smiles, and it has no meaning to him. Once again the two friends are together, Dersu leading, the expedition following.

TIGER “Bad to kill animals for nothing”.

HARBINGER OF DOOM

All seems well until one day the expedition finds a great tiger is stalking them. It follows the first time that Uzala’s senses fail him, when he loses his pipe on the trail. As they progress, it almost seems as if the tiger is there because as the spirit protector of the forest, he is angry. What angers him, we find, are poachers who block the path to water, and set pits to trap unwary animals, killing indiscriminately for no reason. Later we find that the same trappers have raided a village, taken the women and left the men for dead.

THE RIVER “Cut the tree…not that one!”, repaying the debt


The team rafts down an uncharted river, and run into trouble. They mount a spectacular rescue of Dersu Uzala, which he directs from the middle of the river, hanging onto a submerged log, as the raft is shattered on rocks and rough water. The message here is that necessity is the mother of invention!

A brief happy period follows, with a montage of black and white photographs of Captain Arseniev and Dersu Ursula happy in each other’s company, with ”The Hunter “ theme playing in the background.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END, DISHARMONY, AGING and LOSS, LIFE IN TOWN

“My nose see better than eyes”…(Dersu misses a shot at a wild boar)

One day, the tiger returns to stalk them again. AS he approaches closer, Dersu shoots him, and is immediately appalled at what he is done. Kanga, a forest spirit, will send another tiger…. Then, Dersu’s eyesight begins to fail, and he becomes afraid of the forest. He accepts the captain’s offer of shelter in his home.

I will leave the rest of the story for you.

THE CAST

Yuri Solomin as Captain Vladimir Arseniev. Very nice portrayal of a man we would all like to have as a friend. The character is complex, being a little separated from his men by his education and breeding, and wanting to understand nature, not just survive it. He portrays compassion well, and as the narrator of the story, tells only the bare bones..., compensated by the rich images provided by the film.

Maksim Munzuk as Dersu Uzala. Delightful character, delightful actor. He has humor, dignity and wisdom, yet also is as frail as all of us, and ultimately as flawed. His speech pattern is very Yoda-like, and I think Lucas must have borrowed heavily here. He represents a different time, a different culture, and a different relationship with nature. This character lives well beyond this film, though, although the actor passed away in the same year as Kurosawa, in 1998.


The other characters are simply not that important,but they each have a recognizable personality.

FINAL RECOMMENDATION

This film is a wonderful and moving experience, even though it looks pretty boring on the surface. If you get a chance to see it you will never forget it.



Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older