Review of Red Beard (1965) by Tuomas U — 13 Jul 2008

Possible spoilers to come.

Red Beard is one of my all-time favorites, and maybe the ultimate testament to the so-called "humanism" of legendary Akira Kurosawa. There are several other examples, but in my opinion none as good as this. On the surface the plot structure is very simple: a young doctor learns about the shallowness of his old opinions and in the end has come full circle, with intentions to keep working in the hospital he first so hated. However, telling the plot hardly reveals much about the movie.

It's the meticulously detailed outlook and the substance Kurosawa puts in between those aforementioned events that make Red Beard a masterpiece. Little by little, he creates a chain of good. He shows glory and dignity in a man's death, the changing fate of a young prostitute who also starts to believe in others, the endless compassion of nurses towards a poisoned boy who they previously demonized for stealing from the hospital etc. etc. Just one careful and plausible qualitative case after another, all designed to make us believe in humanity. Overall, Red Beard is a highly emotional case against social determinism. And, as Donald Richie points out in his book The Films of Akira Kurosawa, calling it a "tearjerker" doesn't do the film justice because of the concern for detail and realism. Even with the quasi-simple plot, there's no movie quite like this one.

People might be scared of the film's length (179mins in the Sandrew Metronome version), but if I remember correctly from Richie's book, Red Beard is still perhaps Kurosawa's most commercially successful offering. So at least the Japanese audience wasn't too put off by the duration...