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Dersu Uzala | acoolsha :: a personal culture log :: robert bruce rodger

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Akira Kurosawa

Dersu Uzala 26 December 04

Section: kurosawa

Categories: Film / dvd-mine

Viewed this powerful film with friends.

I’ve seen it at least five or six times, and each time I see a bit more in the sparse and finely honed dialogue. I own the version with English subtitles, but for this film I prefer the version with German subtitles, which I’ve seen in a cinema. German has some advantages in conveying Dersu’s basic Russian: Dersu doesn’t use the “I” pronoun, in the English version he uses “me” whereas in the German he often uses “meine Leute,” which translates as “my people” and wouldn’t work well as such in English, but it does in the German. When Dersu speaks of animals in the forest, and the forces of nature, such as air, fire and water, he refers to them each as “Mensch” in the German and the English is rendered as “men.” “Mensch” can really only be translated in English as “human being,” which also wouldn’t work in the English, but is beautiful in the German.

Dersu!

Title: Dersu Uzala

A film by: Akira Kurosawa

Starring: Maksim Munzuk, Yuri Solomin, M. Bichkov, V. Khrulev

Year: 1975

  • Title: Dersu Uzala