Described as 'the most overlooked Kurosawa film', this statement should be taken at face value, not with the romantic idea it is unfairly overlooked. There is much that is brilliant here, but overall it is lesser and not greater than the sum of its parts. There are many brilliant scenes, where the film's many warring personalities are skilfully juxtaposed in individual frames; any aspiring film director would do well do study this. The ice skating scene from the ice festival where skaters wear ghoul masks is something Fellini appears to have lifted for the carnival scene in I Vitelloni. Also in one of her best ever roles (better than Tokyo Story), Satusko Hara is fantastic as the scorned ex-concubine who is in turns melancholy at her situation and vengeful. The Wicked Witch of the East from the Wizard of Oz was surely an inspiration here. Most at fault is the role of Masayuki Mori as the idiot Kameda, his long silences, lack of gesticulation and slowly spoken lines only serve to kill the viewer's attention. We never get to feel much sympathy with his infirmity; perhaps his best bits were cut by the studio from the four hour version that Kurosawa created? There is no resolution or epiphany as in the end to Ikiru. Plus Toshiro Mifune's character is basically little different to the unruly warrior from The Seven Samurai, where it really belongs. This is worth watching for some of its parts, but this is not and has never been a successful film. My personal favourites from Kurosawa are Stray Dog, Seven Samurai and Ikiru.

Not a bad film at all by all means, but considering that it was directed by Akira Kurosawa, one of the greatest directors of all time, and based on a novel by one of the great novelists of the 19th century Fyodor Dostoevsky it was a bit of a let-down.The Idiot's biggest problem was the extensive cutting, originally intended to be a 266-minute long film and very faithful adaptation it was cut by one hour to Kurosawa's outrage, and the problem is that this interference quite badly shows. The first half felt rather fragmented and erratically paced, jumping around so much with things starting and ending very abrupt;y that it was not always easy to follow (and it would have been even more so if I was not familiar with the source material already) and character motivations rather confused and irrational. Luckily the second half does calm down significantly and the drama more linear. The dramatic scenes do get a bit overwrought and pedestrian in pace and the cutting robs them of the depth and detail that would have made them better.Some have said they found the performances weird and off-kilter, for me they were mostly decent if nowhere near among top-tier Kurosawa standard. Those adjectives that said do apply to the performance of Kurosawa regular Toshiro Mifune (and to a lesser extent Setsuko Hara), a fine actor but he overacts quite wildly here and it does hurt the tone of the film as well as being very unlike his usual standard of performing. As an adaptation, it does come up short, not just how the film was treated but also with how little of Dostoevsky's style comes through, the philosophical, social and literary meanings almost completely stripped and overshadowed by the soap-opera-ish melodrama that the sometimes thought-provoking but also a little heavy-handed and disjointed script.However, Masayuki Mori carries the film solidly in a sensitive and wisely underplayed performance, and Setsuko Hara brings a moving dramatic intensity to hers, although like Mifune some of her delivery is a little over-egged. Takashi Shimura can also be relied on to give a great performance. Kurosawa directs with his usual technical brilliance and command of the story, the cutting disallows his style to shine even more but he does a solid job (seeing his calibre as a director however one does expect something more than that). Despite the treatment the film got, which stopped it from being the faithful adaptation it was intended to be, it doesn't completely disgrace the novel at all even with the updating, setting change and that it feels more lesser Kurosawa than a novel by Dostoevsky. The basic story, apart from a large gap where it really does feel like an hour was cut out and of course not enough of Dostoevsky's style, is here, even if not used to its full potential (a lot of it is introduced and then treated in an on-the-surface way) and the story does transfer to the culture of post-war Northern Japan reasonably well.The music score is hauntingly beautiful and hair-raising, and the settings and costumes are authentic and strikingly detailed. But the best asset (and the only really exceptional one) is the cinematography, the best parts absolutely exquisite and astonishingly vivid and almost on par with the production values of Kurosawa's best work. All in all, largely uneven and disappointing film with some impressive elements, if left uncut it would definitely have been a much better film. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Kurosawa's screen version of Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot" runs for almost three hours and yet it still feels under-nourished and more than a little confusing. I'm not sure up-dating it and transferring the action to post-war Japan was such a good idea. The romantic entanglements that make up most of the plot are not only hard to follow but are overtly melodramatic and not in a good way, nor is it helped by the distinctly off-kilter performances of most of the cast, (Mifune, in particular, goes way over-the-top). Shot in grim monochrome in a snow-covered Okinawa, it's also a distinctly ugly-looking picture and as literary adaptations go, this has to be considered something of a misfire.

Not having read the novel, I am not encumber by the fact that 100 minutes of this film was left on the cutting room floor. I am a Kurosawa fan and love Toshirô Mifune, so I approach the film from that angle.The setting on a Japanese mountaintop fits right in with the fact it is based on a Russian novel. It was so cold that I had to put a coat on to watch it.Kameda (Masayuki Mori) arrives in town after being released from a mental institution. He is "The Idiot," a simple man who is so Christ-like in his manner that people are put off guard. he runs into Akama (Toshirô Mifune), a rich man who has come back to claim his sweetheart, who has been a mistress to another wealthy man since she was 14. Both Kameda and Akama are in love with Taeko (Setsuko Hara), who is promised to a third man. This makes for a fascinating story as the men joust for position, with Taeko playing everyone against each other.There are many other characters that float in and out of this drama, and it makes for some interesting and funny dialog. As mush as I like Kurosawa's samurai epics, his dramas are even better.In the end, there were two idiots.