Dersu Uzala (1975 film)

All you want to know about Dersu Uzala (1975 film)

This article is about the Kurosawa film. For an earlier film of the same title, see Dersu Uzala (1961 film).
Dersu Uzala
(Дерсу Узала)
(デルス ウザーラ)

original film poster
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Produced by Yoichi Matsue
Nikolai Sizov
Written by Vladimir Arsenyev (book)
Akira Kurosawa
Yuri Nagibin
Starring Maxim Munzuk
Yury Solomin
Music by Isaak Shvarts
Cinematography Asakazu Nakai
Yuri Gantman
Fyodor Dobronravov
Editing by Lyudmila Feiginova
Distributed by Mosfilm (USSR)
Release date(s) July, 1975 (USSR)
August 2, 1975 (Japan)
October 5, 1976 (USA)
Running time 141 mins.
Country Flag of the Soviet Union Soviet Union
Flag of Japan Japan
Language Russian
Budget $4,000,000 (est.)
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Dersu Uzala (Russian: Дерсу Узала, Japanese: デルス ウザーラ; alternate U.S. title: Dersu Uzala: The Hunter) is a 1975 joint Soviet-Japanese film production directed by Akira Kurosawa. The film won the Grand Prix at the Moscow Film Festival and the 1975 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, the only Academy Award that Kurosawa received for a single film.

Plot

This film is based on the 1923 memoir of the same title by Russian explorer Vladimir Arsenyev, about his exploration of the Sikhote-Alin region of Siberia in 1902-10. The film opens to a forest that is being cleared for development, and Arseniev searching for an unmarked grave. Transported back in time, a topographic expedition troop, led by Captain Arseniev (Yuri Solomin), encounters a nomadic, aboriginal (Goldi) tribesman named Dersu Uzala (Maxim Munzuk) who agrees to guide them through the harsh frontier. Initially viewed as an uneducated, eccentric old man, Dersu earns the respect of the soldiers through his great intelligence, accurate instincts, keen powers of observation, and deep compassion. He repairs an abandoned hut and leaves provisions in a birch container so that a future traveler would survive in the wilderness. He deduces the identities and situations of people by analyzing tracks and articles left behind. During a violent winter windstorm, he saves Arseniev's life by arranging their equipment into a makeshift frame, in order to secure the straw and provide thermal insulation for the fatally cold evening. At the end of the expedition, he leaves the soldiers by the railroad tracks and returns to wilderness, only to encounter Arseniev again, years later, on another surveying expedition. However, time has begun to take its toll on the independent hunter. In an act of self-preservation, he shoots a tiger - an act which he is convinced would exact nature's retribution - and precipitates his physical decline. Unable to hunt for survival and plagued with guilt over the senseless slaughter of an animal, he accepts Arseniev's offer to live with his family in the city, and gradually fades... staring at the burning fireplace, lost in his memories, crushed in spirit.

Trivia

Akira Kurosawa transcends the confines of traditional cinema with the startling imagery and camerawork of Dersu Uzala: the barren trees glowing red from the embers of the campfire; the ethereal blue smoke rising as Dersu points out his family's burial site to Arseniev; the long, static shot of the two men looking at the horizon, juxtaposed between the rising moon and setting sun; the seamless tracking of the soldiers aboard a raft, drifting down the river; the frenetic panning sequence as Dersu and Arseniev struggle to reap grass during the windstorm. To define Dersu Uzala as a story about an aboriginal tribesman is to describe humanity through a two-dimensional photograph. Dersu Uzala is an allegory for the environmental toll of civilization, a testament to a profound, enduring friendship, and a heartbreaking portrait of aging and obsolescence.

In the film, the Nanai people are referred to by their obsolete Russian name, Gol'ds.

Since the film was made during the height of the Sino-Soviet confrontation, and its story took place in the disputed Ussuri basin (an island in the Ussuri River almost led the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China to war in 1969), many in China thought that it had a hidden Russian expansionist agenda. Aolei Yilan, a film released in 1979 about the Daur people's resistance against Russian expansion in the Amur region, can be viewed as a response to Dersu Uzala from the Chinese expansionist agenda.

The film was shot in now obsolete 70 mm film process sometimes called SOVSCOPE 70, originating on 70 mm negative film (as compared to Western counterparts shot on 65 mm negative). All known video transfers of the film are originated from 35 mm reduction elements.

External links

v • d • e
Films directed by Akira Kurosawa
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s

Dodesukaden · Dersu Uzala
1980s
1990s
Awards
Preceded by
Amarcord		 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
1975		 Succeeded by
Black and White in Color
This 1970s drama film-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dersu_Uzala_(1975_film)"

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