Cinema: A Japanese Apocalypse

Yojimbo. In the movies, where every man is a genius until proven otherwise, only one director of recent years has not been proven otherwise: Japan's Akira Kurosawa. In Rashomon, Seven Samurai and Throne of Blood he displayed formidable powers as a moralist, an ironist, a calligraphist of violence. In Ikiru, one of cinema's rare great works of art. he revealed a rugged realism, an exquisite humanity, a sense for what is sublime in being human. Now. in a movie that is both a wow of a show and a masterpiece of misanthropy, Kurosawa...