No Regrets For Our Youth Film Essay

In Kurosawa Akira’s film, No Regrets for Our Youth, Yukie and Itokawa are spending time with each other, after Noge had left. Once Yukie finishes playing the piano, which was to ignore Noge, she seems to out a bit out of character. She grabs a cigarette and asks for Itokawa to light it up, which he does without question. However, she moves her head away, and this is where the sequence begins. At 12:56, Yukie immediately turns to Itokawa and demands him to bow on his knees to her. This is in a medium shot, so Kurosawa can allow for the audience to know where the characters are set up in the room before he changes shots. Right after, Itokawa asks why he should bow to her, it changes into a close-up shot of Yukie now almost pleading for him to just do it. She almost does it in a way that seems innocent and sweet, but then it just turns into her demanding he do it. At around 13:20, there is still a close-up shot of Yukie, but now it becomes a reaction shot. There is no dialogue between Yukie and Itokawa, all you see is her facial expressions changing ever so slightly. At 13:48, the shot changes back to a medium shot where now we can see
There is one moment during the sequence where Yukie has this small smile as she is waiting for Itokawa to bow. It almost gives off this sinister look of power she has over him. As well, throughout the film she shows these mixed emotions that she is feeling with her smiles. A similar scene is when we are at the end of the film and she gets on the truck. She sees all the neighbors from the farm and has this same default smile expression. At this moment, she does not seem too happy because of conflicting emotions, but puts on this mask or facade. Although she is has this small smile on, it seems to be her default, almost empty, expression that she puts on. Even though she may not be one hundred percent happy at that