Plagued by health problems that kept him out of the director's chair, Akira Kurosawa spent the final three years of his life crafting a painstakingly detailed script for what he hoped would be his thirty-first feature film. The screenplay is based on two short stories by one of his favorite writers, the Japanese novelist Shugoro Yamamoto (Kurosawa previously adapted Yamamoto's tales into SANJURO, RED BEARD, DODESOKADEN and AFTER THE RAIN, the last directed by Takashi Koizumi after Kurosawa's death in 1998) and marks an interesting departure for Kurosawa: Had he lived to direct it, the film would have been his first in over 50 years to deal solely with the lives of wo...
Released:
2002
Rated:
NR
Length:
119 mins