One of these days, I really need to sit down and watch Seven Samurai or Yojimbo or Hidden Fortress, all masterpieces of film by Akira Kurosawa that I've heard a lot about, seen emulated and homaged, but have never made time for. Reading Barefoot Serpent, Morse's tribute to legendary filmmaker Kurosawa, increases my desire to see these films, because Morse successfully conveys the strengths and motifs of some of Kurosawa's work, even to someone who has never seen one of his films. That's impressive enough, but Morse isn't content to simply create an illustrated fan letter to Kurosawa, instead weaving in a story about a family coping with loss during a Hawaiian vacation which is interesting on its own merits and steeped in some of the same themes and motifs that Kurosawa worked in. I imagine that if you're familiar with his work, you'll get even more out of the story, but even a Kurosawa novice such as myself will walk away from this graphic novel just blown away by the strength of the work.
Over the past couple years, I've become an absolute fanatic about Morse's artwork, and Barefoot Serpent is a typically excellent performance on that score. The story is bookended by color pages which tell the story of Akira Kurosawa in a straightforward and yet somewhat poetic style, and each picture sums up so much of Kurosawa's life that the words can be fairly sparse, letting the artwork tell the story. Each picture is also so beautiful, thought out from design and color standpoints, that it could stand alone as a work of art, as well as being part of a sequential narrative. Morse tells stories with symbols and shadows, superimposed images and straightforward shots from real life, and I'm simply amazed by how much storytelling he packs into these relatively few color pages, and how he conveys such a deep appreciation for Kurosawa's work in the art and the words.
While the book is a tribute of sorts to the work of Kurosawa, the majority of the story doesn't really involve the filmmaker at all. Instead, it's a story that plays off of some of the same themes and character archetypes that he used, and after reading the bookend story sections, it's clear even to someone who has never seen a Kurosawa film how the main story is steeped in the same Kurosawa style. It's a story that incorporates a strong suicide element, although it's never directly addressed, and despite having a fairly dark reason behind it's existence, it manages to come across as very hopeful and optimistic.
This is due in no small part to how well Morse writes the two children who are the lead characters of the book. The boy and girl, neither of whom are named in these pages unless I'm mistaken, serve as characters and symbols at the same time. It's interesting to note the outsider/insider cultural role that both of them play, that they're linked together through a shared ability to see and hear things no one else can and that they have both the energy of youth, despite the obvious sadness that has infected the girl's life. Morse tells a story of one of those days most of us have had, meeting a new friend who you'll only know for a day at most but with whom you spend a day you'll likely remember for your whole life. For the girl, it's also a journey into a different world, as she hears stories of another culture and learns how those relate to her own situation. Her mother has a similar encounter, and one can't help but feel the heartbreak that the mother feels when she's relating to the story of the dog, as the clerk at the shaved ice counter unknowingly just twists the knife by asking a question the mother has no doubt been asking herself: "Where was I when my child needed me?"
There is real magic in these pages, and I'm not just talking about the appearance of ghosts, the Night Marchers or talking wooden masks. No, the magic is to be found in the reactions of these characters, as they learn to accept what has happened to them, to find some happiness with each other and to move on without forgetting. The story mostly seems to center around a boy and girl exploring Hawaii, but it's actually about loss and coping, about despair and finding hope. It's definitely one of the best books I've read all year.
