From an eight-part series about my key creative influences between the ages of 14 through 29, arguably the years when the foundation of one’s artistic point of view is established.
When I was thirteen PBS ran The Seven Samurai and I was gobsmacked.
“I was young but I realized that I was watching something extraordinary,” was how I put it to a newspaper interviewer years later. In my 20s I was able to see nearly all of Kurosawa’s earlier work in a series at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh.
You could create a film school based entirely on his films. His beautiful use of the long lens,
astonishing ability to harness the weather,
his painterly ability to storyboard,
his deft skill in mixing different acting styles,
his mastery of movement,
and his knack for leveraging scale.
Unforgettable scenes, indelible images, deep human insight.
