Dersu Uzala (1975)

Saw Dersu Uzala (1975), an unusual film which combines the direction of legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa with the technicians of the USSR.  The plot of the film follows a Russian surveyor who befriends a hunter, the titular Dersu, in the wilds of Russia.  It's sort of boy's own adventure with the two of them getting lost in the forest and surviving thanks to Dersu's survivalist know-how.  The film does Kurosawa's usual thing of being stirring, but ultimately sweet and sentimental.  This film is also on a list of 45 great films that the Vatican put out for some reason.

The film spends a lot of time in open-mouthed awe of the hunter Dersu.  It's unclear why he imprints on the main character, but he follows him around, saving him from danger, performing super-natural feats of marksmanship, talking of the wind and the snow as though they were people, and generally being a back-woods superman.  He is the true man, the true survivor whom we all aspire to be like and whom modern civilization has destroyed.  In a testament to Kurosawa's skill as a filmmaker, I was all set to hate Dersu and even I, dainty curmudgeon that I am, even I liked him by the end.

The opening scene of the film shows the surveyor in a new shanty-town being constructed.  The surveyor asks strangers for help but cannot find Dersu's grave (this is the opening scene, recall), so we know things won't end up great.  To make matters worse, the surveyor cannot find the grave, and to make matters even worse, the surveyor no doubt had a part in making this shanty-town come into existence, what with his surveying and all.  He, the modern man, has betrayed Dersu, not only by eradicating him, but somehow by being not as wise, not as spiritual as him, and the surveyor is us, and we are all incited.

I didn't really dig this film.  I've never been very interested in living off the grid and roughing it and so on.  It all seems vaguely condemnatory (and I tried to lay out above why it feels that way to me) and I'm not sure what the solution is.  We can think romantically of the wilderness we no longer live in, but it's much comfier to live in a house than in a series of lean-tos and huts, so I think this is an improvement?  I don't know.  Perhaps I am too comfortable and lazy and crass to truly get into the film's groove.  A miss for me.