Rent Dersu Uzala (1975)

Time and a Tiger - Dersu Uzala review by CH

Are Vladimir Arseniev's journals widely read here? Certainly in Russia they continue to be popular, and they were even well known in Japan. At the beginning of his career, Akira Kurosawa wanted to make a film from them but soon realised that he would need more experience behind the camera - and to make the film in the wilds of Russia itself.

Come the early-Seventies, he was able to set to work. Great good fortune brought him Yurly Solomin to play Captain Arseniev and Maksim Munzuk as Dersu Uzala. The latter is a huntsman, a long-time inhabitant of the forests, whom he and the rest of the surveying force encounter while they seek to find pathways through seemingly inexplicable terrain cut through by a fierce river.

Such is Uzala's knowledge - borne of experience and instinct - that he is able to guide and save them through the seasons, especially as the winds get up and snow descends.

That is essentially the story, which lasts almost two and a half hours. And rarely has there been anything so gripping, whether time is given to treks beneath the sun or constructing a hut from shrubbery to fend off the imminent hand of Death, which also lurks in a river as it heads towards the torrents - not to mention a tiger with whom Uzala is in as much communion as the rest of us are with a pet cat.

Exactly how Kurosawa achieves this is a mystery which might be solved through scene-by-scene analysis but, even on repeated viewings, this is not something to induce one to press the pause button. Such is the photography, one should travel dozens of miles or more to see it upon a large screen.

It is one of the best films, and its making must have been as arduous as any of the original expeditions (indeed, Solomin had been in a sanatorium before hearing that Kurosawa was set to make the him, and, in getting to the auditions, was startled to find that he was to have a starring parth father than be one of the foor soldiers). Here is as individual, and as affecting, a study of the noble savage and purported civilization as any to have found a place in our consciousness since Dryden created the phrase 350 years ago.

As others have pointed out here, the film is spread across two discs (although it would fit onto one). Ask for the second disc if it is still not listed as two discs.