This heavy editing left the film with a fractured, episodic feel, but many critics argue that this "brokenness" actually enhances the movie's haunting, dreamlike quality. The Performative Extremes

Akira Kurosawa’s (or Hakuchi ) is often remembered as a "beautiful failure"—a massive, ambitious adaptation of Dostoevsky’s novel that was famously butchered by the studio, yet remains one of the director’s most personal works. The Soul of a Saint in a Frozen World

Kurosawa’s intent was clear: he wanted to portray a genuinely good man and show how that purity is destroyed by a faithless world. A Production in Ruin