SOURCE: "Kurosawa's Madadayo a Fully Alive Story," in Chicago Tribune, March 20, 1988, p. A.

[In the following review, Wilmington lauds Kurosawa's film Madadayo.]

The cinema has given us very few artists of the stature of Japan's Akira Kurosawa, director of the haunting mystery Rashomon, the raging battle epic Seven Samurai and the melancholy tragedy Ran. Poet of action, dark comedian and great storyteller of the human condition, Kurosawa has stood at the summit of his profession for over half a century, in the company of John Ford, Ingmar Bergman, Jean Renoir and very few others. He is the acknowledged all-time master of cinematic action, but, more than that, a painter of primal emotions, sadness, savagery, terror and pity.

That is why the Chicago premiere of his most recent film, Madadayo, at Facets Multimedia, is such an essential event, one which no movie lover should consider passing by.

Yet it's...