Last night I watched Kurosawa's first color film "Dodes'ka-den." This is a brilliant work that tells the strange lives of people living in a wasteland. It features a mentally handicapped young man whose dream it is to be a streetcar operator (he actually acts out his dream, too), a man suffering from a tick with a terrible wife, two drunk men that switch wives and apparently don't even care about it, a young boy that lives with his dreamer father, and a girl living with her uncle and dealing with having a sick aunt. She makes fake flowers in order to earn a living and takes on her aunt's duties as well. The soundtrack is done by Toru Takemitsu, who also did the soundtracks to "Woman in the Dunes," "The Face of Another," and "Pitfall" by Hiroshi Teshigahara. It seems like if Takemitsu did the soundtrack to a film and it's incredibly bizarre, I will like it.
