A dread of nuclear catastrophe is not new to Kurosawa. In 1955 he directed Record of a Living Being, a powerful film about an aging patriarch obsessed by the imminence of war. Later, Dreams (1990) forever fused a nuclear power plant disaster to the image of Mt. Fuji: nature in upheaval. Kurosawa sets Rhapsody in August in contemporary Nagasaki as four teenage cousins visit their grandmother, a survivor of the blast. Repelled but curious, the teenagers search through Nagasaki for remnants of the event, while the grandmother fascinates them with chilling stories of water-imps and ghosts. The devastation of Nagasaki, at least for the adults, has passed into the realm of safely remote folklore. But it is Kurosawa's central metaphor, the twisted wreckage of playground equipment, that focuses the film's intent. The delicately serene Rhapsody in August speaks to today's youth who, after all, are not insulated from the errors of their elders.-Steve Seid