Idiot

I like The Idiot.

But enough about [YOUR NAME HERE]!

No, but seriously, folks..

I like the book The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Maybe you've heard of it?

For Christmas, I got a DVD of Akira Kurosawa's film adaptation from 1951.

It's pretty faithful, but apparently there was loads of stuff cut out of it, so it's a bit choppy. This version is 165 minutes long, but the original version was 265 minutes. That's pretty long. A minute for every day of a madman's year.

The original version is lost in a warehouse somewhere.

I liked this version, though. He seemed to 'get' the characters, which is the main thing.

Toshiro Mifune is in it. You might remember him from a billion other Kurosawa films. He's great.

Anyway, there's a scene in the film where Mifune looks incredible. I think the film is set in contemporary Japan, but I can't work out what he's wearing.

I have a theory that Kurosawa, or Mifune, or the wardrobe department, had a weird premonition of all male pop culture icons of second half of the twentieth century and amalgamated them into one bloke.

He's wearing a dressing gown - I'm not sure if it's a normal kimono - and his hair is all quiffed-up.

He looks like ALL of the following:
Elvis Presley
Clint Eastwood (who ended up pretty much playing Mifune in A Fistful of Dollars - a remake of Yojimbo)
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Wolverine (who's pretty entrenched in Japanese culture)
Harrison Ford
Bruce Lee
Al Pacino
John Travolta
James Bond (who loves dressing gowns)
Tom Selleck
Sylvester Stallone

And this is 1951, remember.

I think Mifune was an early choice to play Obi-Wan Kenobi (George Lucas loved him), so he has that going for him too.

Pretty impressive.

Anyway, here's a picture:

Yes, maybe I oversold it. It's possible. But it seemed like an interesting insight.

I have too much insight. And there's no hope insight. I think that's the saying.

There's no hope in sight.

There's no hope in insight.

There's no hope in insight in sight.

There's no hope in sight of insight inside.

***

The word "insight" looks weird to me now.

(in)sigh(t)