Red Beard

Red Beard (1965)

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058888/]

The Gist:

Red Beard is a great late stage Kurosawa flick that explores the character arc of a young egotistical doctor under the tutelage of the wise, gruff head doctor of some poor inglorious clinic in rural Japan. This gruff doctor is Red Beard, who is played by long time Kurosawa collaborator Toshiro Mifune. This is actually the last time the two would work together as well, and you see Mifune finally achieve the role of patient yoda figure instead of the impetuous youth he had played in many of his previous roles with the director. Finally, the structure of this film is pretty great, widely episodic, with a flashback of a dying patient that could be its own movie. My only complaint is that film feels a little nostalgic at times, a little conventional, and doesn't take some risks that could have made it harder to watch but better poetry in any case. But for the most part they are just small quibbling points, and the intelligence of composition and the way the narrative is weaved together is frequently complex and moving. This is top form Kurosawa and deserves a rank among his best films.

On Another Note:

The fight scene pictured above was weirdly random, brief genre mixing. It came out of nowhere... Kind of great, really.