Arts & Entertainment

'Kurosawa Classics' films at the MFAH

Cougar A&E Services

As spring arrives, so does the pack of new films at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

The film program, titled Kurosawa Classics, is set to run aside the MFAH exhibition The History of Japanese Photography. The MFAH brought the films to Houston to give recognition to Japanese director Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998).

With exception of Ikiru, the series was described by the Los Angeles Times as "an edgy, epic collaboration between Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune (1920-1997)."

Shakespeareis Macbeth is given a Japanese perspective and was largely influenced by Japanese Noh drama. In this adaptation, warriors returning from war run trek through the Cobweb Forest and run into a mysterious old woman (Isuzu Yamada). The woman tells the men that Mifuneis character, Lord Washizu, will become the next emperor.

Akira Kurosawa must have a thing for Shakespeare, because he also adapted Hamlet. The movie is set in post-World War II Japan and indicts the corporate hierarchies of the time. A rising executive in a corrupt company attempts to use his position to expose other men in his company responsible for his fatheris untimely death.

Yojimbo is a 19th-century Japanese samurai film. Unfortunate results unfold when two opposing gangs place bids for the services of a samurai warrior when he comes to town. Yojimbo will play at 7 p.m. April 13 and 20.

Ikiru is about a bureaucrat (Takashi Shimura) dying of cancer who decides in a moment of clarity he needs to give something back to society. The man becomes more assertive at work because he is unable to communicate to his family. He believes that he can make a difference through his job. Ultimately, a neighborhood playground has the answers to his journey for the meaning of life. Shimura, like Mifune, has starred in many of Kurosawais films. Ikiru plays at 7 p.m. April 25 and 27.

The MFAH isnit just showcasing Japan. It also joins the Houston International Festivalis 2003 salute to Mexico with Frida, Naturaleza Viva. Mexican-born filmmaker Paul Leduc directed this amazing portrait of Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), the Mexican painter often considered one of the most important female artists of the 20th century. The film flows in circles through Kahlois memories of a crippling childhood accident, her stormy marriage to fellow artist Diego Rivera, her passion for radical political views and the self-fascination she has with her own twisted body and pronounced features. Leduc turns her life into a work of art itself with the film, which will play once at 7 p.m. April 30. 

For more information or for film updates, visit www.mfah.org. Student tickets cost $5.

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