1. The Bad Sleep Well (Akira Kurosawa)
The most famous Japanese director (at least in the Western world) Akira Kurosawa made thirty films in his life. Of those thirty, at least ten are widely considered to be masterpieces: Seven Samurai, Rashomon, The Hidden Fortress, Ikiru, The Idiot, High and Low, Kagemusha, Stray Dog, Yojimbo, and Sanjuro are all widely seen and influential cinematic treasures. Seven Samurai begat The Magnificent Seven, The Hidden Fortress was an influence on George Lucas in making the Star Wars films, Yojimbo was the basis for A Fistful of Dollars and the Spaghetti Westerns that followed. Kurosawa made films from 1943 to 1993, and with so many great films made over the course of fifty years, it is only natural that a few were selected as more significant than others. But The Bad Sleep Well should not be overlooked. Kurosawa's first film made by his own production company is a loose adaptation of Hamlet (as Throne of Blood would be loosely based off of Macbeth and Ran based off King Lear) that deals with an illegitimate son seeking revenge for the death of his biological father. The incomparable Toshiro Mifune (Japan's top star and Kurosawa regular) plays the son who marries into the family of the head of a public land development agency whose corrupt head was responsible for his father's death. Also featured in the film is Takashi Shimura, another Kurosawa favorite, and Kyoko Kagawa as the Mifune character's wife. Unlike Seven Samurai and the "Man with no name" films Yojimbo and Sanjuro (which followed and overshadowed The Bad Sleep Well directly), The Bad Sleep Well is set in Japan in 1960 when the film was made. Kurosawa's bleak commentary on the Japanese government's corruption is placed in the foreground here which nicely fits into the structure of Hamlet. The film begins with a lengthy wedding sequence in which the intrusive press (Kurosawa had a noted interest in the impact of the press) overlooks the wedding of Koichi (Mifune) and Yoshiko (Kagawa). The staged nature of the wedding (which gains meaning on repeat viewings) highlights the theatrical nature of the film; you are given the perspective of the press, and they view and comment on the proceedings like a Greek chorus. High ranking officials of the public land development agency are being arrested for shady business deals, and the brisk bridal speeches given by company officials humorously read like not guilty pleas at a trial. After the wedding Koichi goes to work with his father-in-law at the corrupt company in order to tear it down from the inside. He pushes an underling (who carried out the tasks given to him by the chief officers of the company) to insanity. Koichi says that his inability to kill the underling may show that he isn't serious enough about his vengeance, but if changing your identity to marry the daughter of your sworn enemy isn't commitment then I don't know what is. The film uses various clever visual metaphors, the most obvious is when Koichi uses a flashlight to literally shed light on the company's wrongdoing. But the film, which picks up from the beginning and does not slow down, really hits its stride in the third act, when Koichi and his accomplice kidnap a company official in order to force him to confess to the company's crimes. Koichi finds a spot to trap the official in: the abandoned rubble of a basement of a building torn down by bombs in World War II. Kurosawa found the perfect spot for his film, the land development company had a duty to its people to build in the wake of absolute destruction, but their corrupt nature lead to the ruin of the lives of people like Koichi who now mindlessly seeks revenge rather than using his considerable intellect productively. You can always tell the story of a country more from its ruins than from its buildings. The film's abrupt and bitter ending predicts Kurosawa's later more pessimistic films, but he is at peak bleakness here. Due to the routine bureaucracy of public institutions, even if Koichi did punish the right people, the system still would be broken. The harsh truth is unfortunate, but the masterful way Kurosawa unveils it makes it worth the while. The Bad Sleep Well is not only the most overlooked film in Kurosawa's filmography, it may just be his best.