The lost worlds of Dersu Uzala

Press, 9 April 1979, Page 16

The lost worlds of Dersu Uzala

I Winter ice breaks up around them as Russian surveyors slog through the : Siberian mire in the early i 1900 s. | Without Dersu—the pathfinder, the friend—they seem [miserable, lost, fumbling through the mud. ! The soldier/mapmakers move through a forest land- | scape that is not a cheerful place, even with its changi ing colours and moods. They ; build big fires against the [cold and dark. It is “a place [where witches could gather,”' Isays the leader. [ Then Dersu, an old Mon- [ Igolian hunter, appears almost mystically out of the]

dark. Slightly stooped, bandy-legged, he squats by [ the fire and agrees to be i their guide. Some films are so good their reputation grows substantially each time they briefly reappear. “Dersu Uzala” is one of them. Now playing at the Academy, it is a near-perfect evocation of friendship and man in the wilderness, coming to grips with fear and loneliness. In the end, the old hunter must face his own fears of a tiger, failing eyesight and [ city ways. Akira Kurosawa, most familiar as the Japanese director of samurai films that were translated in America into “The Magnificent I Seven” and others of that kind, brilliantly combines the look of tangled forests, rivers and ice flats with their sounds — running water, birds, horse hooves, boots crunching through snow, humming railway tracks. The sun lowers across an ice-bound lake where two men are lost, the wind comes up, the men frantically cut grass and stagger about with frenzied breathing, trying to survive. At the start, Dersu says the soldiers are like children. And they are, playing and laughing in an old log hut while he works outside to patch it up against the rain. When they leave the hut, at the moment when the rain stops and a rainbow appears, Dersu “provides for people he will never see” by leaving behind food and matches. Dersu’s world is a tough but magical one. To him, everything is as alive and aware as a man. i "All you do is talk and talk,” he says to a crackling fire. In a heavy fog. where tiger tracks are first seen, Dersu says the grey shroud is only the earth and forest sweating. They will get well soon. ! “What do you want, tiger?’’ he shouts into the mist. “There is plenty of room for all of us.” The tiger is real enough at the start. Dersu tries to warn it away, then kills it (or thinks he does) to save his friend, the Russian captain. After that the tiger becomes more symbolic than anything else. Dersu thinks the forest spirit will send another tiger to kill him. He grows morose and irritable, and loses

touch with his forest when! his eyesight starts to go quickly. He is still in charge — he has to organise his own rescue when hanging onto a snag in a raging river — but the frightening tiger is always at his back. Even the tiger's shadow on the captain’s tent may be in the old man's imagination. He is now afraid of the forest, a fear “conjured up by a failing mind,” the captain says. [ So Dersu is persuaded to | I live with the captain and his i [ family in a city, where he ■ | sits hunched in front of a (fireplace, under a blanket. Like an ancient Chinese man earlier in the film, he stares; into the fire and sees the I hills. City life confuses him. He] must not shoot a gun there,] he can’t sleep outdoors,] can't get enough air, is arrested for trying to chop! down a tree in the park. He [ was angry about paying for' firewood. “I sit here like aduck,” hei [tells the captian. “How can! . men sit in boxes?” [ So his friend gives him a! new rifle, easy to aim, and! sends the old man back to i the forest. Children who have a rea-i sonable attention span with-| out fidgeting, and who can | read subtitles, should see [ this film. It is much like “Shane,” years ago, in its imaginative power. Come back, Dersu, come back.

AT THE CINEMA

Stan Darling