Four children go to their grandmother Kane's (Sachiko Murase) house in Nagasaki for the summer. Enthralled with the USA and its consumer culture, they begin to learn about the atomic bomb and how it killed their grandfather, Kane's husband. Her older brother emigrated to Hawai'i many years before and has just passed away. His American son Clark (Gere), Kane's nephew, comes to Japan for a visit. Not a lot "happens" in this movie; it is more of an elegiac character study, uncharacteristically calm for a Kurosawa -- though of course it is his penultimate film, made in 1991 when he was about 80 years old.
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The review of this Movie prepared by David Loftus
RHAPSODY IN AUGUST is a movie written, produced and directed by Akira Kurosawa in 1991. Eight nominations (the picture won four) for the Japanese Academy awards.
An old grandmother, Kane, is left with her four grandchildren in the family country home near Nagasaki, Japan. The children's parents have gone to Hawaii in order to make the acquaintance of Kane's older brother who's just got in touch with his family after having emigrated to the U.S.A. some 70 years before.
While the children are trying to persuade Kane to fly to Hawaii, the old woman starts to relate to them stories about the time of the explosion of the atomic bomb on the island and how this tragic event has affected the members of their family. The children soon forget the age difference between them and Kane and take an avid interest in their grandmother's stories. At the end of the summer, they will look at their native city with different eyes.
The review of this Movie prepared by Daniel Staebler