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
Itokawa’s back and see that he is now on his knees. Then 13:54 shows her running away from Itokawa to her reflecting on what just happened as she bites down on her finger.
Throughout the close-up of Yukie it was at an eye level angle. While she is reciting her dialogue, although she is not look straight on at the camera, the camera is at the same height as her. This also happens when it’s a medium shot to show Itokawa in the scene. As well, the sound during the sequence it is either on-screen or parallel. Any time that Yukie or Itokawa are speaking, they are on screen and there is no background music. Yet, once there is no dialogue, there is a slow transition into somber background music. The background music helps dictate the mood and facial expressions of the character.
In this sequence, we can see an internal conflict Yukie is having with herself about Noge and Itokawa. Noge has their fiery personality and Itokawa is more reserved and safe. Thus, when Noge leaves, she tries to provoke something in Itokawa to not agree and follow what she says. Yukie wants Itokawa to break this safe side of him and give her a heated retort back. This is why Yukie grabs a cigarette and begs Itokawa to bow on his knees for no reason. When the audience is shown a close-up shot of Yukie as Itokawa is going to bow, we are able to see her eyes cast downwards to watch him bow on his knees. Soon she comes to realize what she has made him do. It gives off a more intimate moment the audience can have with Yukie during this sequence. Although it is not her best moment, it lets us see these different emotions that are all swirling inside of her. Additionally, the sequence gives more impact because we do not actually see on-screen Itokawa bowing in front of Yukie. It feels different from other films where the actions that is begged and pleaded for, is not shown on-screen for the audience to witness. I feel as if Kurosawa chose these shots to the audience, so we can get a glimpse of sort of whom Yukie is and what she is going through.
In the film there are a lot of close-up shots of Yukie to show her emotions and how she is feeling at that moment.
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
moment.
The film shows Yukie going through a lot of ups and downs in her scenes. One minute she will be content with what she has and then completely change. Yukie will set her sights on doing something and with one little thing she will completely change her path into a different direction. This is evident in her demanding Itokawa to bow and we see this close-up on her face. At first her face is harden and stoic, but then she casts her eyes and away and starts to bite her nails. This is when she gets to her knees to ask him why he was doing that. She was so insistent on making him bow and, as if a switch were turned on, then she finally understood what was happening. This also happens when Yukie finally see Noge after a long time. He is talking with Itokawa and the Professor, when she decides leaves the conversation to hide in her bedroom. She was so firm in staying in her room, even when her mother says she wont be seeing Noge for a while as he is going to China. We see her contemplating about if she should bid Noge and Itokawa a farewell. She creates different positions of her thinking it over before she finally opens the door to say goodbye to the men. When she takes on these different positions, it is like when she changes facial expressions when she watched Itokawa bow. Simple body language and facial expressions help tell the audience all that there needs to be. There is no need to have internal-diegetic sound that tells us what she is thinking.
I feel like these conflicting emotions that Yukie had gone through are one of the things that connects to the title of the film. As I have said before, she tends to do one things and then does a complete turn around. I think this is where the title comes in. Kurosawa wants the audience to see all these changes happening in Yukie that, in a way, is her not wanting to regret the choices she has made. And by the end of the film, she finally feels the most comfortable at the farm and doing the fieldwork. She can now look back on her “youth” and feel no regrets for what path she took that led her to that moment.