Véritable explosion de couleurs, « Dodeskaden » n'en demeure pas moins une
chronique sociale des plus pessimistes et des plus poignantes. C'est la
vie des pauvres parmi les pauvres qu'Akira Kurosawa nous narre ici,
leur quotidien comme leurs rêves les plus fous, le récit alternant entre
réalité sociale et séquences surréelles. Si les personnages hauts en
couleurs (c'est le cas de le dire) sont un des principaux atouts du
film, on est surtout subjugué par la maîtrise formelle du japonais. Ne
se refusant aucune expérimentation, pour son premier passage à la
couleur il met la barre très très haut, il peint tout ce qui peut
l'être, utilise chaque élément du cadre, associe avec talent toutes
sortes de tons... Malheureusement le public de l'époque fut insensible
ou trop décontenancé par ce film novateur, causant la ruine de la
compagnie de production que Kurosawa avait créée avec ses amis. Les
conséquences furent désastreuses : Kurosawa tenta de se suicider,
certains de ses ex-partenaires (comme Masaki Kobayashi) ne se relèveront
jamais de cet échec financier... Pourtant quel film ! Bien que
pessimiste, il est souvent drôle, toujours poétique et terriblement
émouvant. Et surtout très beau! Comme dans un certain film d'Isao
Takahata, l'éclat de la forme permet de contrebalancer la noirceur du
propos, n'en atténuant ni la vérité ni la portée, mais en introduisant
une part salutaire d'espoir, que les être humains portent ici en eux
pour la plupart. Encore un chef-d'œuvre pour Akira Kurosawa,
bouleversant et inoubliable.
[4/4]
“Dodes’kaden” by Akira Kurosawa (1970) depicts and examines the conditions of life and of the human soul in today’s urban civilization. Kurosawa is not too interested in the polished city individuals monotonously rushing for work and back and living an artificial life of prescribed goals and standardized interests and tastes. Real heroes of DDSKD are semi-homeless paupers living on the giant dump in surrealistic decorations instead of houses, with a background of, as if, expressionistic painting. By these aesthetic analogies between the given and the created Kurosawa emphasizes a surrealistic condition of people’s life and expressionistic condition of their imagination. People’s way of life and their feelings, described in DDSKD, reflect the basic psychological archetypes constituting the existential legacy of humankind. Each character represents a certain anthropological model of life and certain way of the perception of the world.
RépondreSupprimerKurosawa questions the expediency of technological orientation of today’s civilization which condemns human life to fruitless nomadism and neurotic restlessness and makes human dreams escapist and mentally disturbed. It is as if human beings, instead of learning how to live and how to improve the conditions of their lives, tried to avoid real life through pursuing mirages and vain and absurd goals. Question of being becomes a question of how to detour being. Real problems of human life are systematically put aside, postponed into future and never resolved and, as a result, they crystallized into morbid but majestically narcissistic characters of DDSKD living their lives amidst picturesque garbage on a waste land. It is human history itself (together with human nature) that has become the waste product of a sterile world of urbanistic post-modernism.
DDSKD, Kurosawa’s first color film, starts and ends with multicolored drawings of streetcars – the favorite occupation of children of various nations, which are so unnaturally bright in the moving lights of street traffic that it is as if all the importance, all substance of life has gone to these drawings, leaving people depressed, apathetic, senile, abandoned, wretched, tragically comic, irresistible and unforgettable.
The film provides an elaborate criticism of Western and Eastern cultural traditions in which rational and superstitious and prejudicial ingredients are fused together and together in one decide the destiny of humankind.
The music of Toru Takemitsu is so expressive and so “Dodes’kaden” that, paradoxically, it has its own independent value from the film and makes the composer an equal partner of the revered auteur Kurosawa in his creation of this exceptional work of art. The acting is simultaneously realistic and epic, emotionally involving and scholarly articulate.
By Victor Enyutin