A.K. (1985)

User Rating:

7.2/10   

Director:

Chris Marker

Writer:

Chris Marker (writer)

Release Date:

29 January 1986 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary

Plot Keywords:

Making Of

Cast

Vittorio Dalle Ore	...	Himself
Masato Hara	...	Himself
Ishirô Honda	...	Himself
Akira Kurosawa	...	Himself
Chris Marker	...	Himself
Toshirô Mifune	...	Himself (archive footage)
Shinobu Muraki	...	Himself
Tatsuya Nakadai	...	Himself
Takao Saitô	...	Himself
Tôru Takemitsu	...	Himself
Fumio Yanoguchi	...	Himself

Also Known As:

Kurosawa Akira (Japan) (alternative title)

Runtime:

Japan:75 min | USA:71 min

Country:

France | Japan

Language:

French | Japanese

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Iceland:L

Company:

Greenwich Film Productions

Trivia:

This documentary will be included as part of the Criterion Collection DVD edition of Ran (1985).

Quotes:

Chris Marker: [narrating] In this kind of shooting, the first pitfall to avoid is appropriating a beauty that does not belong to us - to play up the lovely, backlit shot. Of course, some of that borrowed beauty will come through anyway, but we shall try to show what we see the way we see it, from *our* eye-level.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Music for the Movies: Tôru Takemitsu (1994)

A pleasure for fans of Kurosawa

Chris Marker's elliptical, oblique documentary on the making of Akira Kurosawa's "Ran" is an uneasy blend of hagiography (usual Cahiers du Cinema stuff) and Marker's trademark meditations on the mediating role of technology in memory and the human experience, plus probably aging, and etc., etc., etc. These Gallicisms seem out-of-place; but the philosophies are easily discarded. What makes the film a pleasure are the glimpses we see of Kurosawa's work processes, in addition to all the detail and work that goes into the making of a true epic.