Dodes'ka-den

A shanty settlement built on a rubbish dump at the edge of the city. Everyone who lives there has a story: a boy who believes he drives an imaginary tram every day, a beggar and his son who dream of building a house, two workers who swap wives, a sick man, a craftsman who does not speak. The film tells no single event; it sets these people's days side by side. Akira Kurosawa directs. The source is the stories of Shugoro Yamamoto. The title is the sound the boy makes imitating a tram. It is Kurosawa's first film in colour, and the colour is not realistic; the shack walls, the sky and the clothes are painted in bright tones and the place is nearly pictorial. It came out of the partnership of four directors Kurosawa formed; with Kobayashi, Ichikawa and Kinoshita he had set up a company to make films outside the studios. Dodeskaden was that venture's first and only film. It failed commercially and Kurosawa could not get work. He attempted suicide in December 1971; he survived, and made his next film in the Soviet Union. The tone does not beautify poverty; hunger, violence and death are directly present. But the film gives imagining not as an escape but as a way of staying alive. Who it is for: viewers working through the whole of Kurosawa and anyone who likes episodic narrative. Who it is not for: there is no plot, it is long, some episodes are weaker than others, and the tone is bleak.