content: Kurosawa has many fine movies. This is the finest. It is, as most great cinema, self-reflective and self-conscious. What is the art of the director, the cinematographer, the actor, the camera, if not the exploration of a scenery? Topography is what film always does, and this film quite literally makes a film about film within its story line and its shots. The slow pace, the developing love between two friends, the muted but ever-present drum of the purpose of topography and film (military)--these call attention to what film is, what it is for, and what the desires and expectations of its audience are. We are bottles on a string. Better to save us than to aim at us.