Akira Kurosawa: Where to Start and Why His Films Still Hold Up [2026]

Akira Kurosawa is almost universally regarded as among the greatest directors in film history, and his reputation can itself be intimidating — the works described as masterpieces, the samurai epic that ran nearly four hours, the mandatory cultural experience. Here is the honest guide to what makes his films actually work and where to start without the weight of obligation.

What Kurosawa Actually Did Differently

Kurosawa's filmmaking was synthetic in the best sense: he absorbed influences from Japanese theatrical tradition (Noh, kabuki), Western literature (Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Gorky), and American cinema (particularly Ford's Westerns) and created something that was unmistakably Japanese and unmistakably his own. The films are distinguished by their visual clarity — wide compositions with clear spatial relationships — and their storytelling directness, which makes them more immediately accessible to Western audiences than most Japanese cinema of the period. The influence on Western filmmakers (George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah) was direct and acknowledged; Star Wars without Seven Samurai is almost unimaginable.

The specific formal innovation that makes his action sequences work: Kurosawa used multiple cameras simultaneously in his action scenes, choosing telephoto lenses that compressed space and made movement more dynamic. He also used slow motion selectively — not for stylistic effect but to isolate a specific moment of action and invest it with weight. The combination makes his action sequences more legible and more emotionally impactful than the chaotic cutting that characterizes much action cinema before and since.

The Honest Entry Points

Rashomon (1950, 88 minutes) is the place to start: it's short by Kurosawa standards, it's structured around a single intellectual puzzle (how four witnesses to the same event give four contradictory accounts, each self-serving), and it announces his filmmaking voice immediately without requiring the patience that his longer works ask for. Seven Samurai (1954, 207 minutes) is the longer commitment that most serious film recommendations require, and it earns its running time — it's structured as a series of character introductions followed by escalating tension followed by one of cinema's great action climaxes, and it remains genuinely propulsive across its length.

The films for non-samurai-era Kurosawa: Ikiru (1952) is his most purely emotional film — the story of a dying bureaucrat who decides to build a park with what time he has left is as direct an engagement with what matters in life as cinema has produced. High and Low (1963) is his best crime film — a kidnapping procedural that transforms midway into something darker and more morally complex. These films demonstrate that Kurosawa's visual language and storytelling clarity are not period-specific.

My honest take: Start with Rashomon — it's 88 minutes and immediately demonstrates what the conversation about Kurosawa is about. Then Seven Samurai when you have the time and patience. Then Ikiru when you want the most purely human Kurosawa film.