Dersu Uzala

Dersu Uzala (1975) is Akira Kurosawa's wilderness drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. The Japanese director shot it in the taiga of the Soviet Far East, drawing on the field journals of explorer Vladimir Arsenyev. Yuri Solomin and Maxim Munzuk lead.

Arsenyev, a Russian army surveyor, leads an expedition through the unmapped forests of the Ussuri region and meets Dersu, an aging Goldi hunter who reads the river, the wind and animal tracks the way other men read a page. Dersu talks to fire and tiger as equals and pulls the party through dangers no map can chart. What grows between the city scientist and the forest loner is a friendship that outlasts a storm on a frozen lake, old age, and the encroaching modern world.

Kurosawa filmed it for Mosfilm in sweeping 70mm, and every frame is about a single person dwarfed by an immense land. It took the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. This is slow, patient cinema for viewers who care more about a man than a plot. Stream Dersu Uzala (1975) online on iFILM.