The Idiot (Japan, 1951, Akira Kurosawa)

Ben Begins (and ends):

The denouement for both the main character and another was so abrupt and perplexing, I made Monica do some reseach on her handheld device.  An explanation she was unable to locate, but she came upon this general assessment at the site, Criterion Confessions, with which I must agree:

 

"The Idiot (166 min. - 1951): The passionate labor of love Kurosawa made after the breakthrough Rashomon, this adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's nineteenth-century novel is a strange mess. Grasping for something lyrical, Kurosawa ends up clutching at a narrative that often slips through his fingers. Transferring the story into his time and his country, he creates a fable for a world whose morals have gone off-center. It's just that the film itself is off-center, too. Despite moments of intense brilliance, The Idiot is scattered and almost too narrow in its structure. Perhaps the director's original four-and-a-half hour cut had far fewer gaps in it, but the final studio version feels riddled with holes.

 

Kameda (Masayuki Mori) is an epileptic whose lifelong illness and the trauma he suffered in the war have made his mind a tad bit soft. Newly released from a prison camp, where he narrowly escaped execution, he goes to live with his uncle (Takashi Shimura again) in Sapporo, hoping to find some peace and quiet to recharge. Once there, however, his brutal honesty disrupts the social order of the town. His absence of malice and his pure moral thinking, providing a skewed Christ-like example, call attention to the townspeople's own bad behavior. Attracted to the town harlot, Taeko (a smoldering Setsuko Hara), as a healer is attracted to a wound, he becomes embroiled in criss-crossing love lives. Kameda's greatest rival is also his first civilian friend, the primal rich boy Akama (Mifune). As the two wage a mental battle for Taeko's hard, Kameda is also drawn to the more chilling but caring Ayako (Yoshiko Kuga).

The Idiot is essentially a long string of talking-heads sequences that, despite being elegantly framed by Kurosawa's cinematic eye, tend to all run on longer than seems necessary. Motivation switches on a dime, and the story takes the long way around to get anywhere it's going. Yet, as I said, individual scenes can be amazing, and all of the performances are remarkable. The power of the actors kept me glued to the screen, and the marvel of seeing a great auteur digging deep for something meaningful makes The Idiot worth sitting through. Its goals may be mightier than what Kurosawa could get on film, but there is something fascinating about watching him try."

 

Or could it be that the film was simply butchered?  I suspect not.  But even so, Wiki provides information that makes it reasonable to wonder: 

 

"Originally intended to be a two-part film with a running time of 265 minutes, the film was severely cut at the request of the studio, against Kurosawa's wishes, after a single poorly-received screening of the full-length version. When the re-edited version was also deemed too long by the studio, Kurosawa sardonically suggested the film be cut lengthwise instead.  According to Japanese film scholar Donald Richie, there are no existing prints of the original 265-minute version. Kurosawa would return to Shochiku forty years later to make Rhapsody in August, and, according to Alex Cox, is said to have searched the Shochiku archives for the original cut of the film to no avail."

Here's a glimpse of The Idiot':