Immediately after its premiere more than a year ago at the Cannes Film Festival, Akira Kurosawa's "Rhapsody in August" caused quite a furor, especially among the American contingent. The film was accused of being politically naive, acting as an apologia for the United States having dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. After all, the critics said, the Japanese pulled us into World War II with Pearl Harbor and there were plenty of innocent lives lost by other Japanese bombing raids as well.
Having now seen "Rhapsody in August," however, that assumption by the critics is what really seems naive. This film is a much more personal look at the aftermath of that devastation as seen through the eyes of an elderly survivor. Kurosawa seems to be saying that after all the political explanations and blame are washed away, and now that the war has been over for 45 years, what remains is the trauma suffered by those who went through the experience.
In its way, this film could be compared to the post-Vietnam movies that attempt to explore the trauma that remains with veterans of that. Or, in this case, perhaps the trauma that Vietnamese survivors live with on a day-to-day basis.
The story here is deceptively simple, and it is sentimental and minimalist in the telling. The film's central character, Kane (pronounced Ka-nay), now a grandmother in her 80s (played beautifully by 86-year-old stage actress Sachiko Murase), still lives in the farmhouse she once shared with her husband in the gorgeous countryside that surrounds Nagasaki. Kane, who lost most of her hair but none of her dignity in the blast, is quiet and sweet-natured, with a sly sense of humor, and when the film opens, she is entertaining four grandchildren for the summer.
We see the kids reading letters to her on the porch, letters from their parents, who are in Hawaii to visit a dying relative, Kane's long-estranged brother. It seems the brother went to Hawaii after the war, married an American woman and made it big in the pineapple industry.
The letters beg Kane to pack up the children and come to Hawaii, to help fulfill her brother's last wish — he wants to see his sister before he dies. But Kane is reluctant. She was one of more than 10 children and can't even remember this brother. She suggests that perhaps it's all a ruse.
But the kids, clad in T-shirts with American slogans, would love to go to Hawaii, so they vow to change their grandmother's mind. When they are unable to do so, the parents return home to talk Kane into making the trip. But their thoughts seem to be more on the brother's fortune than family honor.
Kane, with her devotion to Buddhist rituals and her calm, clear-eyed perspective on life, shames them as they begin to recognize their own motivations. She is also determined to stay put until after an Aug. 8 memorial, the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, when her husband was one of many killed in the elementary school where he was teaching.
Eventually, Kane's half-Japanese nephew from Hawaii (Richard Gere) pays a visit, to apologize for not having been considerate of her feelings in urging her to visit her long-lost brother, and to show honor to her late husband. The apology comes in a sweet, quiet sequence set against a clear, moonlit sky.
And that points up that the story here is almost secondary to the imagery that Kurosawa conjures up. Without the use of flashbacks, he manages to show the audience the devastation of Nagasaki with memorials in the city and on the grounds of an elementary school, where a set of monkey bars is misshapen and bent, a criss-cross of iron rods that seem as sad and hunched over as the survivors themselves.
Another unforgettable image comes in the film's final moments when Kane goes into shock during a thunderstorm, flashing back to the bombing. She runs down a road toward the city in the violent wind and rain, apparently trying to reach Nagasaki so she can save her husband. It's a heart-wrenching sequence that perfectly wraps up a gentle rumination on war's destructive powers and the devastation caused to mental as well as physical well-being.
And it's proof, as if anyone needed it, that at 82, Kurosawa still possesses all of his artistic filmmaking powers.
"Rhapsody in August" is rated PG, apparently for the adult themes here. Otherwise there is nothing offensive in the film.