Seven Samurai June 10, 2009
Posted by ultimateserge in 1954, Akira Kurosawa, Daisuke Katō, Foreign, Greatest films, Isao Kimura, Japan, Minoru Chiaki, Samurai, Seiji Miyaguchi, Seven Samurai, Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, Yoshio Inaba.add a comment
Format: Foreign
Rating:
Directed by: Akira Kurosawa
Starring:
Takashi Shimura
Toshiro Mifune
Yoshio Inaba
Daisuke Katō
Minoru Chiaki
Isao Kimura
Seiji Miyaguchi
Takashi Shimura
Toshiro Mifune
Yoshio Inaba
Daisuke Katō
Minoru Chiaki
Isao Kimura
Seiji Miyaguchi
Seven Samurai is in every sense of the word a: complete film; a film with barely any mentionable flaw. Seven Samurai isn’t just a great or extraordinary film but one paved the way for other underdog movies.
Kurosawa doesn’t waste time in introducing the forces of good and evil. From the start he makes us judge that the poor farmers are losing their honor and integrity because of the greedy monstrous bandits. It is very fortunate that Kurosawa gives so much screen time, especially of the farmers, to grieving. He displays that these farmers have shed their hope of a better life with the bandits around. The only hope according to the Granddad is to hire a couple of sturdy Samurai.
The search for the samurai takes up a large bulk of the film and rightfully so. Unlike the farmers pre-conception that hiring samurai with the single reward of food as tasteless as rice may be tricky, the samurai take up the job with little hesitation. The samurai show that they have little interest in the small reward but only are accepting the job because of the thrill such an experience may bring for them. Kurosawa shows us the unimportance of the reward by displaying the farmers treatment of the samurai in the past. It clarifies that the samurai fight for the sake of fighting and less for the sake of the victim.
Kurosawa’s film displays fight scenes that should shame current Hollywood gimmicks like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The scenes are technical and logical and practical in nature and in no way are they bloated. It sounds as if watching multiple similar fight scenes may become repetitive but not at all. The fight scenes are real and eye-popping because the fighters are real and imperfect in their own way. Some make horrid mistakes, others display signs of high valor and for the farmers: they all await to get their hands on the bait.
Kurosawa not only directed but also co-wrote this magnificent tale of heroism and forgiveness that had never before displayed, in such a way, on film. Seven Samurai isn’t a film about good and evil but about the ugliness that occurs on both sides.
Though all the performances are top-notch, Toshirō Mifune demands much credit becasue of his wild and over the top portrayal of Kikuchiyo which is more than Oscar-worthy and simply unmatched by any other actor in the film. The cinematography is also a stone mark of the film that cannot be ignored. There is certain humor and melancholy in each frame of the film that takes it beyond Cinema and at times gives it a sense of reality; a sense that stays with the viewer much after the closing credits.
There are many great films that have lost their touch through time, yet Seven Samurai and most of Kurosawa’s work has withstood the test of time. Seven Samurai stands up there with Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane, Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, and Fellini’s 81/2, as Cinema’s greatest masterpieces.
