Rhapsody in August (1991) on Netflix
Kane's husband died in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. A letter from Hawaii asks her four grandchildren, spending the summer with her, to press her to visit a brother she cannot remember.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb7.2/108,360 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes60%
Trailer
Plot summary
Kane lives in the same rural house outside Nagasaki where she was on August 9, 1945, when the atomic bomb killed her husband. Her son Tadao and daughter Yoshie travel to Hawaii to meet Suzujiro, a brother she has not seen since he left for the islands in 1920 and whose name and face she can no longer recall. The letters they send home describe his pineapple plantation and his American family, and Suzujiro's son Clark invites Kane to bring her four grandchildren for a visit. The children, who live in Tokyo, spend the summer with their grandmother and visit Nagasaki, where they see the place their grandfather died. Kane is unsure whether to make the trip.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Rhapsody in August (1991)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- To get ants marching in a straight line to Richard Gere's feet, Akira Kurosawa hired a professor from the Kyoto Institute of Technology to lay a pheromone trail. When the ants kept fanning out, the crew realised the soil absorbed the pheromones and replaced, dried and remixed it with cement.
- Initial previews of Rhapsody in August by foreign reporters were often negative, and Akira Kurosawa faced accusations of anti-Americanism for failing to mention Japanese aggression. Reporters were especially upset by a scene where Richard Gere's character appears to apologize for the nuclear attacks.
- Akira Kurosawa cast Richard Gere as Clark after asking him at a party celebrating Kurosawa's birthday and 1990 Academy Award. Gere, whose interest in Asia and Lamaism struck the director, offered to act for free but accepted a minor fee.
- In 1990 Saint Paul mayor James Scheibel, whose city is Nagasaki's American sister city, learned the Peace Park had no sculpture from the United States. Rhapsody in August held its Midwestern premiere in St. Paul in 1991 to raise funds for the Constellation Earth sculpture, donated to the park and unveiled in September 1992.
- Gere's schedule made it hard to finish early during an especially hot summer of retakes, and Akira Kurosawa increased his role as the script was rewritten during filming. The actor's contract was only for three weeks.
- The ant scenes took further effort: assistant director Toru Tanaka spent three days on a shot of ants climbing a rose bush. According to Donald Richie, it could not be finished because the ants were at the wrong altitude until the crew moved the shoot from Gotemba to sea-level Kyoto.
- Rhapsody in August marked the first time Akira Kurosawa's film was produced solely by Japanese studios since his Dodes'ka-den in 1970.
- Sachiko Murase was initially reluctant to accept the role of Kane, but was impressed by Akira Kurosawa's understanding of the suffering inflicted by both sides of the Second World War. She considered his direction compassionate and gentle, and never asked him to change Kane's personality.
