The Cinematheque

“Kurosawa is a master of unease and a virtuoso of the slow buildup … The most effectively discomfiting moments [in his films] aren’t the most ghoulish or gory. Rather, what spooks you are the slight shifts that turn the ordinary into the inexplicably unordinary.”

Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

Kurosawa Kiyoshi might need no introduction. He directed Cure (1997) and Pulse (2001), making him a de facto figurehead of what was termed ​“J‑Horror” in North America. And yet, his interest in genre—built on years of appreciation as a film theorist and cinephile—means he can be taken for granted. Perhaps no popular filmmaker today is as idiosyncratic as Kurosawa—devotees know he is an artist of cardboard boxes, ominous offices, and bursts of terror surrounded by uncannily prosaic images. Mainly, he thinks and works quickly, a skill honed during his pre-Cure years in the V‑Cinema wilderness, perhaps too quickly for most critics to easily survey his films (last year alone he directed three of note).

Depending on whether he’s seen through his festival-awarded work, his well-known horror films, or the many exceptions, there can appear to be multiple Kurosawa modes. But one commonality is that, at his peak, there’s no one who understands better how to structure a setpiece—whether one of dread or awe or anti-spectacle. Timed to the release of his latest and highly anticipated film Cloud, this sampling of his last decade of filmmaking is a chance to revisit two big-screen triumphs: a suburban paranoia thriller (Creepy) and an uncategorizable film that might be his unsung masterpiece (To the Ends of the Earth).

“I think that film for me is a medium point between a fictional story and reality. You start with the genre, which is fiction, and gradually move towards reality. Somewhere in between you find film.”

Kurosawa Kiyoshi