Film Review
If
Rashomon (1950) brought Japanese
filmmaker Akira Kurosawa to the attention of the West, his next
masterpiece
Seven Samurai
would secure his reputation as one of the greatest filmmakers of the
century. Taking as his inspiration the classic westerns of John
Ford and Howard Hawks, and drawing on Japanese influences, notably the
samurai tradition, Kurosawa crafts one of the most visually stunning
and compelling actions films of all time. No one who watches this
triumphant masterwork can fail to be hooked on Kurosawa for life.
Typically for Kurosawa,
Seven Samurai
combines a ludicrously simple plot with rich, profoundly complex
characterisation. Western audiences may initially be perplexed by
why seven proud warriors would condescend to work for peasants
(particularly as they get so little in return), but if you pay
attention you will see that the film answers this conundrum, through
the individual character portraits of the seven samurai. This
attention to character detail, unusual in an action film, pays
dividends later on, and allows the film's ending to have a remarkable
poignancy.
Whilst the film has an epic scale, and an epic (three and a half hour)
runtime to match,
Seven Samurai
is compulsive viewing from start to finish. The first two hours
of the film meticulously set up the situation and define the main
characters, reserving the now legendary action sequences for the last
third of the film. Kurosawa's masterstroke was to stage the final
battle sequence in torrential rain, since this adds enormously to the
drama and mood of the piece. The intensity and pace of the final
confrontation between the bandits and the samurai is heightened by some
exceptional editing and camerawork, which convey the
thrill and trauma of combat with a stark visceral realism. Watching this film is a far
from passive experience.
By the end of it, you will be shaken and emotionally drained, but also strangely
exhilarated.
As ever, Kurosawa is as well-served by his cast of actors as by his
technicians. Stealing every other scene (just as he had
previously done in
Rashomon),
Toshirô Mifune gives the kind of bravura performance that is the
cinema equivalent of a children's pop-up book - outrageously
over-the-top, but wonderfully so, and perfectly suited to Kurosawa's
operatic, highly visual style of cinema. Mifune's character
serves a vital function in this story, providing the link between the
samurai and the peasants (since he has a high-kicking foot in both
camps). Kikuchiyo's clownish exterior barely masks a complex
tragic inner-self, which is revealed in the film's most dramatic scene,
where the character articulates Kurosawa's own misgivings over the
samurai caste. Kurosawa, it must be recalled, was himself
descended from the samurai.
Seven Samurai is not only a
supremely crafted piece of cinema that gives a valuable insight into
Japanese history, it is also superlative entertainment. Rich in
drama and pathos, it also offers a fair amount of comedy. The
scenes depicting the samurai's attempts to convert the pacifist farmers
into soldiers are hilarious, and Bokuzen Hidari very nearly steals the
show as the cowardly Yohei. Whilst there is much humour to be
enjoyed, this is never to the detriment of the authencity of the
story. Indeed, Kurosawa goes to great lengths to present the
story and his characters as realistically as he can, in contrast to the
somewhat more idealised and fanciful portrayals of samurai that were
then prevalent in Japanese cinema.
It is hardly surprising that such a great film has had an enormous
influence on moviemaking, right up to the present day. John
Sturges'
The Magnificent Seven (1960)
is pretty well a direct remake of
Seven
Samurai, whilst many other film directors have embraced the
motifs and techniques that Kurosawa employed in this film (for example,
the shooting of an action scene with multiple cameras, creating much greater
visual impact than a single-camera set-up when the shots are
edited together).
Seven Samurai
has been emulated many times since it first ignited cinema screens and
film review columns in the mid-1950s, but it has never been, and
probably never will be, surpassed.
© James Travers 2010
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Next Akira Kurosawa film:
I Live in Fear (1955)
Film Synopsis
Japan in the sixteenth century is riven by civil wars which allow gangs
of maraudiung bandits to tyrannise village communities across the
country. The elders of one such village have grown tired
of having their harvest stolen by bandits each year and decide to fight
back. They agree to hire a number of samurai to protect them and
defeat the bandits when they next attack their village. All they
have to offer the samurai in return is food, and so finding such
warriors to work for them will be a challenge. Fortunately, there
are samurai who, having fallen on hard times, are prepared to help
peasants, even though these are an inferior caste. One such
samurai is Kambei, a seasoned warrior who owes his survival as much to
pragmatism as to courage. With Kambei's help, the villagers find
five other samurai who will work for them, and then a sixth named
Kikuchiyo, although he is fact a peasant's son who is trying to fashion
himself as a samurai. When the seven samurai enter the village,
they are greeted not with warmth, but with fear and suspicion.
Distrusting the warriors almost as much as the bandits, the villagers
have hidden their daughters and are reluctant to cooperate at
first. Kambei persuades the peasants that their only hope of
survival is to trust and fight alongside the samurai, although his task
of turning them into an effective fighting unit will not be easy.
But time is running out. In a few weeks, it will be harvest
time. And this is when the bandits will return, to pillage or to
slaughter...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.