Akira Kurosawa's adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Idiot follows an epileptic named Kameda who is a "positively good man" that gets crushed by society. After being falsely accused of murder, he is sent behind a firing squad and is rescued just seconds before his death. He loses his mind as a result of that event, and all that seems to be left is the good inside of him. It is his inability to understand society and his ability to speak only what's in his heart that makes two women fall in love with him, each with their own separate suitors. He too must come to terms with how he feels about each woman.Cut by the studio from its original running time of 265 minutes down to 165 minutes, the movie is unsurprisingly jumbled and disconnected (and surprisingly bad given the big names behind it). There are a lot of scenes that don't make sense or feel out of place. The parts that are left in have been paced for a four and a half hour film, so they feel really slow in the shorter two and three quarters hour film. There is a lot of silence (like pregnant pauses that simply end instead of give birth to something meaningful) and a lot of overacting and a lot of melodrama. There is little subtlety and little left to your imagination, except trying to figure out what parts of the movie were cut by the studio. On the upside, the cinematography is excellent as always, with flawless blocking and camera movements. And I love his use of reflections. On the whole, I simply cannot recommend that anyone see this movie. However, perhaps if you've read the book and you like Kurosawa, you can fill in the blanks yourself and maybe make the film amount to something meaningful for you.
IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043614/
