content: After twenty-five years,Dersu Uzala remains at the top of my list of the best films ever. The previous reviews describe this magnificent film quite well, so I won't add to it, but offer instead a story. About twenty years ago, my wife and I took her four small children, only one of whom could read at the time, to an art theater showing of Dersu. We knew this was a little risky; the response one might rightly expect from children that age to a long, slow moving, subtitled film would be squirmy boredom and complaining, but that is not what happened at all. Kurosawa's storytelling genius captured even these very young minds; they remained attentive throughout the entire film and despite the the fact that three of them had no way of knowing what the characters were saying, enjoyed it to the end. Kurosawa's cinematic mastery carried them along on those long-ago expeditions, and into the intimacy of a deep friendship.