Jaime N. Christley
Akira Kurosawa's best-known film, Seven Samurai is an
engrossing, masterfully constructed epic, one that introduced
Japan (and Kurosawa) as a major player in world cinema. The
greatness of the film does not lie in the usual elements, though,
such as action and imagery, or "largeness." It is two hundred
eight minutes long, but Kurosawa does not feel it's necessary to
remind the audience of how big the film is the way Western
filmmakers do - frequent crane shots, thundering music, and
bright, sensuous colors. Not to say that this is a quiet film.
It's violent, overacting is frequent among secondary cast members
(and justifiably so), and it moves along at a pretty rapid clip.
I've always chosen The Hidden Fortress as my favorite
Kurosawa picture, but that's no strike against his 1954
masterpiece.
Set in 16th-century Japan, run by regional warlords and lacking
a centralized government, the film starts with galloping horses,
bandits scheming to raid a local village following the harvest.
The plans are overheard by one of the villagers, the feeble,
cowardly Yohei (Bokuzen Hidari), who warns everyone else. With no
one to defend them, the villagers weep and cry out for their
misfortune. Rikichi (Yoshio Tsuchiya) is sickened by the
spectacle, curses his neighbors, and vows to seek out and hire
samurai to fight the bandits when they raid. After trial and
error, he finds Kambei (Takashi Shimura), a cunning and wise old
warrior, who is, as we meet him, rescuing a young child from a
starving, mad thief. With Kambei's help, Rikichi is able to
recruit more samurai, until their number is seven. (This is
including the "impostor" samurai, Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune), a
foolish and belligerent wanderer who eventually proves his
worth.)
This is the first act. Kurosawa uses the middle section of the
film to acquaint us with the villagers and the titular Seven, and
observes the various ways they interact. Although the fear of the
bandits is paramount, many of the community's fathers fear for
their daughters' purity while the samurai are around. (Samurai
were Japanese equivalents to medieval knights, but in the confused
time period represented in the film, outsiders were outsiders, and
not to be trusted.) Kambei and his crew train the capable males to
go into combat, and spend just as much time trying to instill some
sense of dignity and pride, as they're aware that psychology is
just as important in fighting as technique and weaponry. We also
gain an understanding of the economic situation.
With the harvest comes jubilation and a false sense of security
- Kambei observes this knowingly, and cinches up for the attacks
he knows are imminent. And sure enough, within days, strange
horses are sighted near the village perimeter. The bandits have
arrived. The final third, approximately, of the film concentrates
on the details of the fighting between the samurai, assisted by
the villagers, and the bandits, who have a strategic disadvantage
(they are invaders, not defenders) but are determined and far less
likely to flinch in the face of danger.
For obvious reasons, the action scenes are not staged in a
manner that an American audience member would be accustomed to.
American war and combat films are most often inspired by
literature of the old west, or by the Second World War, American
Civil War, or Vietnam. All of these classes have one thing in
common: guns. In Seven Samurai, the battles are based on
up-close-and-personal weaponry. (The only exception: an extremely
primitive rifle, which is used infrequently due to its
inefficiency, and a bow and arrow.) On the other hand, fans of
movies like Braveheart are also likely to be perplexed: no
fighting in Kurosawa's film takes place in an open field, with
easily diagrammed troop divisions and battle lines. The forest,
the fog, and the rain each play a heavy role in confusing and
breaking apart the tactical layout of the attackers and defenders.
Nevertheless, the battle scenes are surprisingly easy to
understand, and one of the benefits of the film's length is that,
as the characters travel around and discuss fortifications and
points of entry, we in the audience are able to draw a mental
picture of the village and its surrounding area.
Seven Samurai is not noteworthy only for its action
sequences - indeed, the scenes leading up to the fighting are just
as interesting, and necessarily so. The human-centered, non-combat
scenes are not used for filler; we are drawn into the tiny world
of 16th-century Japan, and the characters, primary or secondary,
become as familiar to us as they would become in any other great
film. And Kurosawa's mastery of the cinema, as promised by all his
historians, students, and fans, is simply awe-inspiring. As
Japanese film historian and expert Michael Jeck observes on the
DVD commentary track (featured on the Criterion Collection
release), every last detail of the film, down to the singing birds
in the background, the placement of people in crowds, and even the
weather itself, is meticulously orchestrated by the legendary
director to suit his plans. Camera movements and compositions are
constructed with a neatness that's conducive to visual simplicity
as well as to the communication of dramatic subtext. Musical
motifs are planned and executed with subtlety.
Post-Second World War metaphors are ambiguous and therefore
rarely discussed in critiques of the film. Certainly a strong tone
of pessimism is present, cynicism with the occasional bright spot.
The picture presented of Japan is not a pretty one. And the happy
ending is underscored with a strong note of disappointment and
tragedy. In Seven Samurai, the Japanese defeat the
invaders, whereas history has Japan surrendering to the United
States following the atom bomb being dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. Perhaps Kurosawa's heroes merely survive the
raids, and are not victorious - the repulsion of the invaders
being a point in fiction not parallel with any in history
textbooks.
This film is long, but not long in a way that should frighten
anyone - it compels. Seven Samurai is a rare success in
cinema: it has the breadth and depth of a novel, without being
overly expository, and neither rushes nor lags. I do not expect a
moviegoer accustomed to contemporary movie conventions to suddenly
discover Seven Samurai and be won over - if the epics
you're used to are Gladiator and Titanic, stand by
for a long haul. If, however, you're interested in broadening your
horizons and learning about both classic cinema and foreign
culture, there aren't many other movies out there that would make
a better
introduction.
From Rotten
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