{"id":14766,"date":"2021-06-07T09:46:50","date_gmt":"2021-06-07T13:46:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=14766"},"modified":"2021-06-07T09:46:50","modified_gmt":"2021-06-07T13:46:50","slug":"dersu-uzala-1975-a-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2021\/06\/07\/dersu-uzala-1975-a-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Dersu Uzala (1975) \u2013 A Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Akira Kurosawa is probably best known in the West for his films that are set in Japan\u2019s Sengoku period like \u201cSeven Samurai\u201d (1954), Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985).\u00a0 But one picture of his that I recently watched is set in turn of the century (19th<\/sup> to 20th<\/sup> century) tsarist Russia and is based on the memoir of a Russian explorer, Vladimir Arsenyev, concerning his travels in the Ussuri basin in the Russian Far East. Dersu Uzala was a Nanai hunter.\u00a0 The Nanai are a tribal people who live in the area.\u00a0 Dersu guided Arsenyev’s surveying crew from 1902 to 1907.\u00a0 His knowledge of the climatic and topographic dangers of this wild area several times saved Arsenyev and his men from death.<\/p>\n

The story very simply and directly demonstrates the friendship and respect that Arsenyev and Dersu develop and when the elderly Dersu is no longer able to survive as a hunter Arsenyev takes the old Nanai home with him to Khabarovsk.\u00a0 But although Arsenyev\u2019s wife and son adopt the strange tribesman as family, we see the stifling restrictions of the town wither the old man\u2019s spirit and he declares that he must go back to the forest.\u00a0 His death and the cause of it completes this story about simplicity and modernity colliding and the humanity that exists on both sides of that intersection.<\/p>\n

One of the interesting things about Dersu\u2019s world view is his animism.\u00a0 He sees \u201cpeople\u201d in almost everything; the sun, the moon, water, fire, the wind, the forest.\u00a0 And he feels that the forest spirit watches him and punishes actions that are forbidden such as his killing of a Siberian tiger that threatened the expedition at one point.\u00a0 And we see his empathy for his fellow man in the practices that he follows.\u00a0 For instance, Dersu leaves salt, matches and firewood at the shelters that he leaves in the woods for the next stranger who will come along.<\/p>\n

The movie was filmed in the Russian Far East.\u00a0 The Arctic ice flows and limitless taiga forest is an impressive if forbidding back drop for the story.\u00a0 Mainly it is a story of men on an adventure in the wild.\u00a0 Although the film is in Russian with subtitles, it\u2019s a pretty good story.\u00a0 I recommend it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Akira Kurosawa is probably best known in the West for his films that are set in Japan\u2019s Sengoku period like \u201cSeven Samurai\u201d (1954), Kagemusha (1980)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237],"tags":[2530,2532,43,38,1355,3107],"class_list":["post-14766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-akira-kurosawa","tag-japanese-cinema","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-russia"],"yoast_head":"\nDersu Uzala (1975) \u2013 A Movie Review - Orion's Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2021\/06\/07\/dersu-uzala-1975-a-movie-review\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dersu Uzala (1975) \u2013 A Movie Review - 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