Dodes'ka-den (1970)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- A group of impoverished misfits inhabiting a Japanese landfill have experiences that are alternately joyful and disheartening. Young, disabled Roku-chan (Yoshitaka Zushi) spends his days in a fantasy world where he is the captain of an imaginary train, while his mother, Okuni (Kin Sugai), remains in constant prayer, rarely venturing out of her shanty. A homeless man and his child lovingly envision every detail of the home they wish they had money to build, and a mute girl has a tragic encounter.
- Actors:
- Yoshitaka Zushi, Kin Sugai, Toshiyuki Tonomura, Shinsuke Minami, Yûko Kusunoki, Junzaburô Ban, Kiyoko Tange, Michio Hino, Keiji Furuyama, Tappei Shimokawa, Kunie Tanaka, Jitsuko Yoshimura, Hisashi Igawa, Hideko Okiyama, Tatsuo Matsumura
- Directors:
- Akira Kurosawa
- Producers:
- Akira Kurosawa, Yôichi Matsue
- Writers:
- Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Shinobu Hashimoto, Shûgorô Yamamoto
- Aka:
- Dodesukaden
- Genres:
- Classics, Drama
- Countries:
- Japan
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Reviews (1) of Dodes'ka-den
Dream Logic on a Rubbish Heap - Dodes'ka-den review by griggs
The first thing that grabbed me was the colour. Kurosawa’s first film in colour doesn’t just use it — he paints with it, turning a shantytown on a rubbish dump into something oddly storybook. Even the title is part of the game: “dodes’ka-den” is an invented tram-rattle, and the boy “drives” his imaginary streetcar like he’s got a timetable to keep.
What surprised me is how Kurosawa shoots him — with the confidence and clarity you often get in a Western. He’s a figure moving through a territory, and the world seems arranged around his path. The film leans into mythmaking rather than realism — Toru Takemitsu’s score helps, and so does the way Kurosawa places people like figures in a tableau.
It’s an oddity: loose and overstuffed, funny until it suddenly isn’t, with one late tonal lurch that’s pure whiplash. Knowing its box-office failure fed into Kurosawa’s 1971 attempted suicide adds a shadow, but the film keeps finding beauty where most of us look away.