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A movie and book review blog

  • Reading films, watching books,....
  • Mind candy in the dark
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May 31, 2006

The American dream gone sour. It tells the story a misfit German man who comes backs to normal life after a long stint in prison, his girl friend for the time and their old neighbor - all three of them immigrate to the United States in search of a better life. The better life they were looking forward to was supposed to unravel at a fictious sleepy backwater called Railroad Flats in Wisconsin.

The movie is eerie and very real in the sense that most of the actors were not really actors, most of them played the characters with their real life names in the movie and the story of the main character in the film is entwined with the real life story of the man who played the character - Bruno.S. Even the piano, whom Bruno.S calls his only friend is really his one and only piano in real life. The town of Railroad Flats, WI, although fictious closely resembles one of the towns the director, Werner Hertzog, was attracted to in the US mid-west in the first place. A dark comedy of human lives.

May 21, 2006


(Repost, watched May 2004)This is my first Kurasowa movie. I had a presumption that Kurasowa movies were always about Samurais, since they didn't interest me much I stayed clear of Kurasowa. But Darsu Uzala has made me want to see more of the creations of this great film maker, Akira Kurasowa. I don't know whether Kurasowa has directed many Russian movies, but Darsu Uzala is Russian and tells the story of a Siberian hunter and his friendship with a Russian military engineer/surveyor who comes exploring a nook of Siberia.

The vast expanse of Siberian tundra, so very reminiscent of Alaska, where we are now has given the movie an added charm from our perspective. Darsu is a simple man, with the sharp senses of a hunter who can read from the footmarks on the mud whether the traveller who passed by before him was young or old, his profession and charecteristics. The Russian milirary engineer who comes to survey the area, accidently meets Darsu and strikes up friendship with him taking him as their guide, the story progresses from there. It is a film written in verse about human friendships, our natures, our relationship with mother nature and ofcourse the stark beauty of the landscape and Darsu Uzala is our guide in this journey of revelation.
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