Description
Book SynopsisSurveying all of Kurosawa's films and examining six films in depth-The Idiot, The Lower Depths, Rashomon, Ikiru, Throne of Blood, and Ran-Goodwin finds in Kurosawa's themes and techniques the capacity to restructure perceptions of Western and Japanese cultures and to establish new meanings in each.
Trade ReviewGoodwin's analysis is most interesting in this account of how many Kurosawa plots (like Rashomon and Ikiru) feature a modernist competition between texts to argue a version of what 'really' happened. Journal of Asian Studies A dense, theoretically sophisticated account of the intertextual nature of film as a medium. Goodwin discusses here, among other things, interculturality, the problematic notion of the auteur, and the dialogic production processes employed by Kurosawa. Above all, Kurosawa is described as a film-maker for whom life and art are always in the process of becoming, never static or singular. Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory
