Kurosawa had wanted to adapt Dersu Uzala<\/em> \u2013 Russian explorer Vladimir Arsenyev\u2019s memoir of his journeys in the Russian Far East, titled for a trapper who became his friend and guide \u2013 as early as the 1930s. But realizing that he would need access to the East Siberian taiga region, it was a dream tantalizing out of reach. The release of a Soviet-made Dersu Uzala<\/em> in 1961 made a Kurosawa version seem even less possible. Yet in 1973, when his making any film at all was unlikely, the Soviet film studio Mosfilm offered Kurosawa the access and funding to fulfill this impossible dream. The result, Dersu Uzala<\/em>, released in 1975, has a more subdued reputation than some of his earlier masterpieces. But it has a strong claim for being the actual, for-real greatest film ever made.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n It opens in 1910, with Vladimir Arsenyev (Yury Solomin) looking for the grave of a friend, buried between two tall trees \u201ca long time ago,\u201d he says first, before correcting himself: \u201cThree years ago.\u201d But the trees have been torn down. A village is built over what was so recently wilderness. Nothing remains to mark the grave. \u201cDersu,\u201d Arsenyev says out loud, to no-one: an act of memory preservation defiant of its own futility. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The story of Arsenyev and Dersu\u2019s friendship plays out in flashback, beginning in 1902, when Arsenyev captains a unit of Russian soldiers on a topographic expedition to eastern Russia. One night, Dersu (Maxim Munzuk) approaches the troop\u2019s camp and asks to share some of their food. Munzuk co-founded the national theatre of the Republic of Tuva \u2013 in southern Siberia \u2013 in the 1930s, and had turned his hand to pretty much any of the creative professions of the stage. But Dersu Uzala<\/em> was his first screen role. Much of the film rests on his shoulders, and he delivers. A nomadic Nanai hunter, Dersu is indeterminately old, with a short and stocky build that makes him look sturdy and cuddly at the same time. (A sure influence when George Lucas was designing the Ewoks.) He tells a log on the fire to hush when it crackles too loudly. Some of the soldiers are boorish and rude, revealing their own ignorance in their attempts to mock Dersu: \u201cAre you Chinese?\u201d one asks, \u201cKorean?\u201d It does not occur to him that Dersu and his people are indigenous to this land, which is, according to Imperial Russian army who employ him, as much Russia as Moscow or St. Petersburg is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But Arsenyev forms an instant, abiding connection with Dersu \u2013 who always calls him \u201cCaptain.\u201d He recruits Dersu as their guide, but it does not feel like he\u2019s exploiting Dersu to help with his work so much as using his work as a reason for them to hang out. Kurosawa finds extraordinary colours in the natural landscape as the characters explore it: the pink hue a sunset has cast upon the grass, or a lightning storm which flashes red or blue like the tinted frames of a silent epic. The intimacy of their growing friendship is juxtaposed with the immense wilderness that surrounds them, not in contrast but harmony. Dersu\u2019s deep understanding of the natural world comes from seeing himself as part of it \u2013 out here, imagining \u201cman and nature\u201d as distinct entities is unsustainable. \u201cThe camera is always at eye level: It is through the human eye that the vastness of the steppes is viewed,\u201d Donald Richie writes in his Criterion essay<\/a>, \u201cand it is the human figure, small in this elemental landscape, that one remembers after having seen the film.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A duller take on this story would reduce Dersu to a wise, otherworldly mentor, dispensing hokey folk wisdom that helps our white protagonist grow. Dersu dispenses quite a bit of folk wisdom \u2013 fire, water, wind are all people, and the sun is the most important people of all \u2013 but Arsenyev admires him not merely as a conduit to some ancient wisdom, but for his boundless intellect and his kindness. The friendship between the two men is one of absolute mutual affinity: a soulmate connection that transcends all superficial differences, their love for each other bypasses the need to \u201cunderstand\u201d each other per se. They already understand all the important things. When they reunite, during a second expedition five years after the first, they clamor over a fallen tree to hug each other, as if neither could stand the further time apart it would take to walk around it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Dersu Uzala<\/i>” is streaming on the Criterion Channel<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Dersu-Uzala2-1024x576.jpg\")
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