A | Poor villagers recruit a septet of warriors to protect them from bandits. Directed by Akira Kurosawa Starring Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, and Isao Kimura Review by Jon Kissel |
The term ‘influential’ is a complicated one in film history. It implies some kind of groundbreaking idea or technique that no one had thought of before and future filmmakers adopted, but there’s a difference between first and widest-reaching. There were zombie movies before Night of the Living Dead, and there were McGuffin movies before Raiders of the Lost Ark. Movies that are supposedly influential, too, have the disadvantage of being the original, such that dozens of directors get to take a crack at them before a viewer goes back and sees the original. Going into Seven Samurai for the first time, I’d seen plenty of Japanese period films, Westerns, war films, and teams being assembled. I also knew of Seven Samurai’s reputation as one of the most critically acclaimed films ever made, currently standing at #17 on the Sight and Sound Top 250 list of lists. That’s a lot of baggage to put on its hefty 207 minute runtime, but this is still a classic worthy of imitation. Strip all the expectations away, and it’s just as entertaining and resonant as it was when it was released sixty-six years ago.
All-timer director Akira Kurosawa was ten years into his storied career when he made Seven Samurai. His early works are set in contemporary postwar Japan, but he began the transition to the country’s medieval period with Rashomon in 1950, another instant classic. With a handful of exceptions, he’ll spend the rest of his career with kitanas, kimonos, and top knots, often to great effect. Between films like Seven Samurai and The Hidden Kingdom and Yojimbo, a direct line can be drawn from Kurosawa to directors as varied as John Sturges, George Lucas, and Sergio Leone, all of whom in turn inspired their own devotees. In addition to being the generator of so much imitated content, Kurosawa’s an adapter himself, transplanting Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky to Japan. Working with his constant collaborator Toshiro Mifune, one of the greatest lead actors to ever live, Kurosawa’s one of the most impactful figures in all of cinema.
With Seven Samurai, the problem of a classic film seeming tired because it’s been imitated so many times is solved by its bedrock quality as a fun and meaningful work, doubly impressive in how it holds attention throughout its epic length. I doubt that the first team was assembled onscreen in 1954, but Seven Samurai seems to get the credit for bringing this trope to the masses. Of course, clichés are clichés because they work, a saying that is itself a cliché. Having already seen both versions of The Magnificent Seven, I had a general idea what to expect with Seven Samurai: villagers in danger recruit men to help protect them against a larger force, and the two disparate groups learn from each other on the way to a costly victory. I made guesses at the beginning about who would survive to the end (I went one for three), and I imagined the plot structure in my head (did better on this front). None of that stopped me from enjoying the film moment to moment.
For being such a well-known story, Seven Samurai contains a lot of cultural specificity that made, and makes, it better than its elemental parts. Westerners take a lot for granted after being fed cultural messages for so long, and it’s easy to forget that other cultures don’t share them. For example, the idea of the respectable yeoman farmer is deeply ingrained in America, but for feudal Japan, the farmer’s at or near the bottom of the social hierarchy, a serf with little control over control of their life thanks to the competing mercies of nature or marauding bandits. The soldier class is higher up, but even when they take on a mission, they’re expected to be brutal and cruel to everyone around them as everyone just assumes that violence can’t be cordoned off into one corner of a person’s behavior. The conception of firearms could not be more drastically different, as it’s the equivalent of a sword for Americans but is viewed as cowardly in Seven Samurai. These aren’t openly remarked upon in the film, but it’s difficult to imagine that translating across the Pacific, such that those and other cultural assumptions are cleaned up for the American remakes.
If farmers, soldiers, and guns aren’t what Seven Samurai values, what it does hold sacred is a level of empathy one wouldn’t expect in the prototypical action film. The stereotypes of honor and Bushido don’t play a big factor here, as we’re introduced to group leader Shimada (Takashi Shimura) as he’s cutting off his valued top knot and bushwhacking a bandit under false pretenses. The default position is of ruthlessness. There’s no big Western-style faceoff against incredible odds, just tactics that peel off lone riders from the larger group, thus making them smaller and more manageable. The strategy that this is all done for is a noble act of resistance against the world as it is. Shimada takes the job out of pity for the villagers, and he convinces the others to join by simply presenting them the facts: no money, room and board, and the implicit understanding that their actions will marginally improve things for everyone. An early quibble is that the team is assembled without much convincing, but an hour in, there’s enough world detail and Shimada is charismatic enough to make their acceptance plausible.
With Seven Samurai, the problem of a classic film seeming tired because it’s been imitated so many times is solved by its bedrock quality as a fun and meaningful work, doubly impressive in how it holds attention throughout its epic length. I doubt that the first team was assembled onscreen in 1954, but Seven Samurai seems to get the credit for bringing this trope to the masses. Of course, clichés are clichés because they work, a saying that is itself a cliché. Having already seen both versions of The Magnificent Seven, I had a general idea what to expect with Seven Samurai: villagers in danger recruit men to help protect them against a larger force, and the two disparate groups learn from each other on the way to a costly victory. I made guesses at the beginning about who would survive to the end (I went one for three), and I imagined the plot structure in my head (did better on this front). None of that stopped me from enjoying the film moment to moment.
For being such a well-known story, Seven Samurai contains a lot of cultural specificity that made, and makes, it better than its elemental parts. Westerners take a lot for granted after being fed cultural messages for so long, and it’s easy to forget that other cultures don’t share them. For example, the idea of the respectable yeoman farmer is deeply ingrained in America, but for feudal Japan, the farmer’s at or near the bottom of the social hierarchy, a serf with little control over control of their life thanks to the competing mercies of nature or marauding bandits. The soldier class is higher up, but even when they take on a mission, they’re expected to be brutal and cruel to everyone around them as everyone just assumes that violence can’t be cordoned off into one corner of a person’s behavior. The conception of firearms could not be more drastically different, as it’s the equivalent of a sword for Americans but is viewed as cowardly in Seven Samurai. These aren’t openly remarked upon in the film, but it’s difficult to imagine that translating across the Pacific, such that those and other cultural assumptions are cleaned up for the American remakes.
If farmers, soldiers, and guns aren’t what Seven Samurai values, what it does hold sacred is a level of empathy one wouldn’t expect in the prototypical action film. The stereotypes of honor and Bushido don’t play a big factor here, as we’re introduced to group leader Shimada (Takashi Shimura) as he’s cutting off his valued top knot and bushwhacking a bandit under false pretenses. The default position is of ruthlessness. There’s no big Western-style faceoff against incredible odds, just tactics that peel off lone riders from the larger group, thus making them smaller and more manageable. The strategy that this is all done for is a noble act of resistance against the world as it is. Shimada takes the job out of pity for the villagers, and he convinces the others to join by simply presenting them the facts: no money, room and board, and the implicit understanding that their actions will marginally improve things for everyone. An early quibble is that the team is assembled without much convincing, but an hour in, there’s enough world detail and Shimada is charismatic enough to make their acceptance plausible.
Mifune serves as the starkest example of the film’s worldview because he has a foot in two classes. His Kikuchiyo is one of the seven samurai, but he was born as a farmer and he’s not a real samurai anyway. One can infer that samurai are the equivalent of knights, and therefore have the financial wherewithal to provide themselves with training and weaponry. Class being what it is in any feudal society, there would also be some kind of sense of superiority towards those beneath a samurai. Kikuchiyo gets to strut around with a kitana and fake being in this higher strata, but he also has the ability to empathize with the villagers. When the samurai find the village’s weapons stash, stolen from dead or dying or maybe even murdered samurai, their first impulse is towards class solidarity and the massacring of the village. Kikuchiyo gets to then give the big thesis statement, that all this instability and reprisal makes both society at large and the people within it worse, that providing the villagers with a level of predictability and peace is a deep and meaningful good that will make their samurai brethren safer in turn. By eliminating the bandits, they’re removing a piece of entropy from the world. Another quibble might be that the bad guys are largely a faceless horde, but the film so strongly believes in the mission and sells its rightness that I can let that slide.
Kurosawa’s greatest contribution to cinema with Seven Samurai might be his grasp of what it means to be a great action film. A big part of that is coherence, as in understanding what the geographical stakes are whether you’re watching a single faceoff or a large-scale engagement. The film takes a lot of time drawing out the boundaries of the town, finding the entrances and understanding what their forces can and cannot defend. When the battle commences, those choke points are frequently referred to and maintained, and Shimada keeps a helpful tally of remaining bandits at the center of town. Kurosawa’s grasp of choreography extends to the comedic, as he uses the same kind of language to enact evergreen physical jokes that keep the film from taking itself too seriously. The man knows what he’s doing.
Another man who knows what he’s doing is Toshiro Mifune. In the seven of his performances I’ve seen so far, all with Kurosawa behind the camera, he often goes very big, especially here. He’s more restrained when he’s playing a character in contemporary Japan, so his wild acting in the medieval-set films is surely a choice coming from some kind of Japanese tradition. Every time I watch him when he’s in his gesticulating, face-contorting hamminess, I have to remind myself to wait him out because he’ll get to the good stuff. He very much does in Rashomon, and he does here as well. Kikuchiyo’s a great character, beloved by children, wiser than he lets on, and imperfect and wild to the end.
This is a great film deserving of its treasured status, though it’s not my favorite Kurosawa. Of the seven samurai, three don’t make an impression. It’s not like the film is wanting for time. What’s the difference between 207 minutes and 220 minutes, especially if that extra time is used to make important characters more memorable. That said, competing against masterpieces like Yojimbo, Rashomon, and personal favorite Ran in front, Seven Samurai shouldn’t feel bad about itself. Watching these kinds of classics can’t help but feel a bit like homework, and sometimes, it is. I watched a film by Kurosawa’s acclaimed colleague Yasujiro Ozu in theaters last fall, and humiliated myself by barking myself awake in a mostly-full theater. That was homework. This is a reminder that classics are classics for a reason. A-
Kurosawa’s greatest contribution to cinema with Seven Samurai might be his grasp of what it means to be a great action film. A big part of that is coherence, as in understanding what the geographical stakes are whether you’re watching a single faceoff or a large-scale engagement. The film takes a lot of time drawing out the boundaries of the town, finding the entrances and understanding what their forces can and cannot defend. When the battle commences, those choke points are frequently referred to and maintained, and Shimada keeps a helpful tally of remaining bandits at the center of town. Kurosawa’s grasp of choreography extends to the comedic, as he uses the same kind of language to enact evergreen physical jokes that keep the film from taking itself too seriously. The man knows what he’s doing.
Another man who knows what he’s doing is Toshiro Mifune. In the seven of his performances I’ve seen so far, all with Kurosawa behind the camera, he often goes very big, especially here. He’s more restrained when he’s playing a character in contemporary Japan, so his wild acting in the medieval-set films is surely a choice coming from some kind of Japanese tradition. Every time I watch him when he’s in his gesticulating, face-contorting hamminess, I have to remind myself to wait him out because he’ll get to the good stuff. He very much does in Rashomon, and he does here as well. Kikuchiyo’s a great character, beloved by children, wiser than he lets on, and imperfect and wild to the end.
This is a great film deserving of its treasured status, though it’s not my favorite Kurosawa. Of the seven samurai, three don’t make an impression. It’s not like the film is wanting for time. What’s the difference between 207 minutes and 220 minutes, especially if that extra time is used to make important characters more memorable. That said, competing against masterpieces like Yojimbo, Rashomon, and personal favorite Ran in front, Seven Samurai shouldn’t feel bad about itself. Watching these kinds of classics can’t help but feel a bit like homework, and sometimes, it is. I watched a film by Kurosawa’s acclaimed colleague Yasujiro Ozu in theaters last fall, and humiliated myself by barking myself awake in a mostly-full theater. That was homework. This is a reminder that classics are classics for a reason. A-
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