To some critics – especially in Japan – Mikio Naruse is up there with Ozu, Mizoguchi and Kurosawa in the great pantheon of Japanese filmmakers. He’s never enjoyed the same international acclaim, maybe because – as Aussie film scholar Freda Freiberg surmises in the booklet accompanying this set – western critics missed the beguiling hint of Zen they could find in his rivals. “They could locate Zen Buddhist aesthetics in late Ozu and Mizoguchi, Zen and samurai ethics in Kurosawa. In search of spiritual elevation or showy displays of stylishness, they found Naruse too bleak in philosophy, too austere in style.”
Read the full Mikio Naruse Boxset review
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