Akira Kurosawa

Four witnesses describe the same killing in Rashomon and no two accounts agree. Ikiru gives a dying clerk one playground to get built before he goes; Seven Samurai gives a village swords it cannot pay for; High and Low asks a rich man to ruin himself to ransom his chauffeur's son. Kurosawa staged those decisions in wind, mud and motion, with several cameras running so the action cuts together at speed. The cost lands on you physically, a beat before you have finished reasoning it out.

Signature

• Several cameras running at once on long lenses, cut for continuous motion.
• Wind, rain, dust and mud working on the actors.
• An ensemble arranged around one problem nobody can solve cleanly.
• Wipes and axial cuts marking the joints of the story.