Rhapsody in August (1991) (2025)

Popular reviews

• Review by Rui Alves de Sousa ★★★½ 2

  Life didn't prepare me to see Richard Gere in a Kurosawa film.

• Review by Sally Jane Black 3

  I read that this film was criticized for not acknowledging the war crimes the Japanese perpetrated during WWII, and I have a hard time understanding how or why they should have been. This is a reflection on the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, and on that event's relation to war in general. To suggest Kurosawa had a responsibility to discuss Japan's war crimes is unfounded in my mind; if we're to hold him accountable for this, then, too, he should have mentioned America's internment camps for Japanese-Americans and more. His focus on not even both bombings but just Nagasaki is part of the story being told.

  I come dangerously close to taking the same tack that others take when they say…

• Review by Michael James ★★★ 2

  The lasting devastating effects of atomic bombing are discussed through the lens of three generations in a family. It is a quiet meaningful and though provoking drama with a heart wrenching finale.

  “They claim they dropped the flash to stop war. It’s already been 45 years now. But the flash hasn’t stopped war, they’re still killing people! But you know, war is to blame.”

• Review by Brams ★★★

  Rhapsody in Augustreminds my heavily of a Studio Ghibli film adapted to live action, but not Spirited Away or Porco Rosso. It's more along the lines of Only Yesterday - an emptional, but simple film about family connections.

  It's basically plotless. We follow a few members of a ginormous family in the countryside outside of Nagasaki in 1990. The main cast consists of four children and their grandmother. The grandmother's brother is dying and the children try to convince her to go see him in Hawaii. That's essentially the story we have to work with.

  It gets a little muddled and the familial relations are a tad confusing, but I did enjoy some of the intimate moments in the film.…

• Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★½ 20

  So this is the last film on my Akira Kurosawa marathon. I want to just thank Brandon, whose director marathons inspired me to do this one. Check out his amazing Ozu write-ups and look out for his upcoming reviews on Kurosawa's films.

  
  Looking back over Akira Kurosawa's career, it is impressive just how many different types of film he made. What is also impressive is his unbelievable technical skill at just crafting a movie. He is up there with Stanley Kubrick and John Ford as one of cinema's finest directors in a purely technical sense. He was also cinema's great humanist, a director who constantly found ways to find hope in humanity. He did take dark detours into nihilist ideas,…

• Review by Jake Cole ★★★★ 1

  This film is often described as feeling more like a sketch than a complete Kurosawa work, but that ignores the symbolic density, the probing exploration of the full complexity of trauma, and even the ways that the most sedate of Kurosawa’s features nonetheless shows off his trademark mastery while also feeling like it folds in the methods of other greats among his mostly deceased peers. The latter is evident in the way that the director films Kane’s home with a mix of static shots with a naturalistic but nonetheless eye-popping use of color and object blocking that vaguely recalls late Ozu, even as the camera still moves with little darting pans and frames-within-frames are crafted like textbook Kurosawa.

  As for…

• Review by Randa ★★★★

  Kurosawa almost reaching the end of his career, he gave us with another beautiful film where he shows that the human and sentimental value is something important. It's very beautiful to see the story of "Rhapsody in August" develop. Sad and fun at the same time, hyper characters charismatic and memorable places.

  
  Final Score : 80% 🍎

• Review by Sean Burdett ★★★★½ 2

  91/100

  This was the last thing I expected. One of Kurosawa’s largely forgotten films, this ends up being easily his most powerful and, I think, my favorite. It’s a quiet film, so quiet you might miss it, but it hits harder than I could have ever imagined. It explores the lasting effects of Nagasaki though quiet conversations, beautiful landscapes, and brief moments of fear. By the end of this, every inch of my heart was in the hands of the family here. This was... everything it possibly could be and more. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that final scene in the rain.

• Review by Nick Newman

  Realized I've seen just over half of Akira Kurosawa's filmography, which seems off — shouldn't I have watched everything by someone whose influence alone could put him on cinema's Mount Rushmore? Thus I decided I'll cover my blind spots.

  It's easy to forget Kurosawa could be nearly as ascetic as Straub-Huillet in his latter-day work, except when he deploys the most opulent and surreal image that would possibly function in a film's framework. Richard Gere shot this the year Pretty Woman opened and expresses grief about America's bombing of Japan.

  I’m excited to watch the rest but I kinda doubt a single one will be better than this.

• Review by gregs1999 ★★★½

  The child actors did an amazing job portraying a younger generation with the willingness to learn and engage with the past, whereas their parents were shrugging it off. The grandchildren and the grandma had such a great relationship. Richard Gere was definitely out of place, but he played his part. I was very surprised to see Ishirō Honda played a part in this, helping to write and direct.

  Akira Kurosawa ranked

• Review by Bhavya ★★★★

  Kids spending time with their adorable grandma during summer vacation in a beautiful village, listening to her bedtime stories sounds comfy. But in this movie, the village is Nagasaki that tries its best to move on and leave behind the tragic past. Through the eyes of kids, we witness the effects of the awful explosion years later, thus empathizing with grandma Kane.

  Rhapsody In August is a harsh reminder that trauma might never heal and it's worse when it's something as bad as having witnessed a nuclear explosion.

• Review by PopcornIdeology ★★★½ 1

  This film reminded me Richard Gere exists

  7.8 / 10