[This is my ever-so-late entry in Ingysdayoff's "Foreign Film" write-off, the instructions of which were terribly simple: "Choose a foreign film (a film not of your native land), and review the damned thing!" Easy enough. So why did it take me so long to complete my review of Akira Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai"? Because the damned thing's 3 hours and 27 minutes long, that's why. Get off my back, will ya. Here's the review…]

Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" begins with a stark credit sequence: muted white letters on a velvety black background, scored by ominous koto drums. It is the last time this film, so much more complex than your average samurai flick, does anything in pure black and white.

Sixteenth Century Japan was a time of warlords. The central rule of law had been overthrown, and pockets of anarchy seized the day. Bandits, clad in stylized armour abroad an army of untamed horses, come across a meager little village of farmers. One suggests they ransack the village. Another reminds that they did just that last fall. A suggestion is offered: that they come back when the barley has ripened, the rice crop has been replenished, and loot will be at a premium. All are in agreement, and proceed on their way to their next victim.

When the bandits have gone, an old farmer, cowering in the hay, stands up. The look of terror on his face is ominous, as he has heard every word. He runs down to the village below.

After a contentious meeting, the farmers go see Grandad, the wise patriarch who lives in the mill on the outskirts of the village. He suggests they hire samurai for protection, advising them to "Find hungry samurai… even bears come out of the forest when they are hungry." The village, a poor and desolate place, can offer no rewards, only 3 square meals. Or so it would seem.

A party of four, including the young and intensely angry Rikichi (Yoshio Tsuchiya, armed with fierce eyes), the overprotective father Manzo (Kamatari Fujiwara, willing to absorb the content of the audience), and the old and weak Yohei (Bokuzen Hidari, who looks a lot like Red Skelton's sad clown), head out towards the nearby villages, in a quest to round up some samurai saviours.

Takashi Shimura (who appeared in 22 films with Kurosawa as his director) plays Kambei, a.k.a. Samurai #1. Kambei is a ronin, a "waveman". He has no lord, and is thus made to "ride the waves", looking for employment. He is introduced with a powerful scene of trickery: in order to trick a burglar who is holding a baby hostage, he must shave his head, including the sacred samurai topknot, and dress in priest's clothes. The scene manages to show Kambei's individualism, his wisdom, his skill, and his loneliness. Thereafter, Kambei is forever rubbing his bald head, a reminder of the sacrifices he must make in order to do his job. For the most part Shimura's portrayal of Kambei is warm and inviting, showing the affability of a man his age that's seen what he's seen and has the ability to be reflective. But in moments Shimura also shows why Kambei is the leader of the group. He has a commanding and enormous presence when he wants to.

Of course, with every old master comes a young disciple. Here that role is fulfilled by Isao Kimura, as Katsuhiro (Samurai #2; 5 films with Kurosawa). Not only is Katsuhiro the young disciple, he also fulfills another commedia dell'arte-esque role as one half of a pair of young lovers. Katsuhiro meets Shino, the daughter of Manzo, while both are out in the fields picking flowers. Shino's hair was cut short by her father to make her look like a boy so she'd not attract an undesirable samurai. Three guesses where this plot line ends up.

Gorobei is the third samurai aboard. He's pudgy, sports a ragged beard, and, like Shimura, has an aura of affability about him. That's the one thing that surprised me most after seeing this film the first time. The Samurai are quite the friendly bunch. An audience member might be fooled into thinking they would be welcome hanging out for a drink with this group of men. That is until the swordplay stars. Gorobei, as played by Yoshio Inaba (sadly, this was his only time working under Kurosawa), becomes Kambei's right-hand man. The two men, previously strangers, become quick allies and an effective team. "The greatest friendships," he notes upon their first meeting, "often result from a chance encounter."

Samurai #4 is named Shichiroji, and is played by the equally pudgy Daisuke Kato (4 films with Kurosawa). Shichiroji gets probably the least to do of the seven. Even so, he still has a well-defined character. He's the spirited former right-hand-man of Kambei, who enjoyed and suffered through many battles with his old friend.

The fifth Samurai is probably my favourite character. Heihachi, played by Minoru Chiaki (9 films with Kurosawa), is discovered while chopping wood. After his skill with an axe is noted, and a couple of absurd comments offered, Heihachi is immediately drafted into the group. In Minoru's hands, Heihachi is a grinning jokester, full of personality and vivacity. But he also has a serious side; he's the one who confronts the angry Rikichi, and tries to get him to open up about his problems (Touchy-feely psychology in a samurai film? You got it).

Kyuzo (Seiji Miyaguchi, 4 pairings with Kurosawa) is Samurai #6. He's probably the most skilled swordsman, but also the most enigmatic character. We don't get to know Kyuzo all that well, except that he's serious about his trade, and is both merciless and merciful.

The most stunning achievement that Kurosawa and fellow screenwriters Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni get credit for is the creation of seven men, each with distinct personalities, backgrounds, and fully-defined characters. The above paragraphs are only thumbnails sketches, and do not come close -- purposefully -- to fully detailing the complexity of each man. With seven men this recognizable and this real, it calls into question who will survive the encounter with the bandits, and who will perish. Leaving the ending in much doubt. "We were counting on him to cheer us when the situation became gloomy," one notes after the first samurai perishes, echoing the sentiments of the audience, "and now he's gone."

The most mathematical amongst you will notice that I've only detailed six samurai so far, and since the film is called "Seven Samurai", one must be missing. I figured that Toshiro Mifune, the thespian extension of Kurosawa the filmmaker (they made 16 legendary films together), deserved his own little section here.

Mifune doesn't appear in the movie until it is twenty-one minutes old, and even then you might have a tough time picking him out amidst the crowd surrounding Kambei's ritualistic shearing. No matter. Moments later Mifune, as Kikuchiyo, is elbowing his way through the crowd like a hungry panther stalking his prey, confronting Kambei with a vicious stare, and backing down tongue-tied in the face of the older man's power (Kurosawa gets a good deal of mileage out of the Kambei/Kikuchiyo = Father Figure/Son relationship). Mifune is intense and feral here (even more than in "Rashomon", where I was forced to use the same adjectives to describe his performance), constantly scratching his chest and beard, bellowing out laughs and growls, and stomping around without abandon.

Kikuchiyo is not immediately accepted by the other Samurai, for reasons made clear later on, but he longs for the recognition the job offers. So he follows them back to the village. I love the interactions between Mifune and the other 6, as they slowly learn to respect him, and find humour in his unorthodox methods.

Kikuchiyo provides much of the film's comic relief (helped out by the witty Heihachi in this regard), as Mifune is a deft clown. Whether he's teasing a group of children or performing a well-staged gag with a horse, he always manages to get a laugh. But he's also the heart and intense soul of the group, the one who gives them life and a will to go on even under the direst of circumstances. One scene, in which we discover that the village once murdered samurai in the past and stripped them of their armour, concludes with a furious Mifune monologue delivered directly to the camera. It neatly elucidates the grey area that I alluded to in my opening paragraph, and is filled with so much power and intensity that I thought the celluloid was going to melt.

Critics of the day accused Mifune of delivering an over-the-top performance. True, he makes no attempts to capture any kind of reality. But Mifune is also playing a character that needs to overcompensate, lest his more skilled brethren find out his secret. Thus, it is the character who overacts, and not the actor playing him. This kind of theatricality can be off-putting to some (it is to me, usually), but in Mifune's deft hands the pill goes down easily. Kurosawa adds to the theatricality of the acting through his ingenious stagings; many of the night scenes are (seemingly) lit by enormous bonfires, which provide both a vigorous background and exaggerated shadows.

I recently purchased the Criterion Collection "Seven Samurai" DVD, and was surprised to learn that the film was presented in 1:33-1 aspect ratio. "Blasphemy!" I thought. How could a fullscreen presentation capture the majesty of Kurosawa's wonderful tracking shots, featuring samurai's running across the frame, as wheat fields zip by in the foreground? Or the widescreen splendour of the finale's battle scenes? Or the abundant vertical wipes? Seeking to find fuel for my fire, I took a quick trip over to the Internet Movie Database, where, after a slap on the hand, I learned that the film was originally shot in a 1:37-1 aspect ratio. With my tail between my legs, I slinked off to write this review.

But this little episode shows that Kurosawa, long considered a master director, is very much deserving of that honorific. Even without the widescreen available to Sergio Leone or Steven Spielberg, he is able to compose shots of astounding energy and clarity and power.

His use of deep focus and composition is masterful, almost Wellesian in its prodigiousness. There are many moments when all seven samurai are in the same asymmetrical shot, some in the foreground, some in the middle ground, and some in the background. Kurosawa's camera captures every face in clear focus, and every bit of business necessary to continually define their characters. That being said, it's the last shot of the seven together, an atypically symmetrical and static setup, that best captures the powerful and eternal bond that these men share. It is a stunningly powerful image, framed against a grey sky, which aptly closes the movie.

Kurosawa, a master technician and innovator, also shows off a flurry of new (at the time) tricks, which, despite attaining near-cliché status in the preceding fifty years, are still boldly effective. His use of three cameras to capture any one scene allows for his trademarked ever-closening edit technique, allowing their omniscient eyes to amble up on a situation from far away, through the use of a few judicious cuts. This camera setup also allows for increased continuity during the action sequences. Kurosawa could jump across the 180-degree plane at will, always sure that what he saw from the other side would match up perfectly. In addition, it gives many of the shots a renewed sense of dynamism.

Most effective of his techniques, and I'd argue most copied, is the use of slow motion to punctuate action sequences. When Kambei finally vanquishes the burglar, the enemy lingers for a moment, wounded by Kambei's sword, and then slowly falls to the ground in a pile of dust. It is a moment you've seen many times since. Here is the original.

And fans of Sergio Leone will most likely recognize that director's tendency to cut from close-up shots of worried eyes to the oncoming action and back again, as a way to ratchet up a scene's tension. Kurosawa, and this is starting to sound like a running joke, most likely invented that little trick too.

Besides his skills as a cinematic technician, Kurosawa also shows that he is an ace storyteller. Despite the fact that the first real battle doesn't occur until the movie is over 140 minutes old, there is no shortage of action and drama to keep the viewer engrossed. The Rounding Up The Samurais sequence is particularly enjoyable, as each one, in the order I note above, shows up, is efficiently characterized, and decides, for his own reasons, to join the gang. It's a long sequence -- running over half an hour -- but loads of fun. Even when you consider that only once is a real sword drawn.

The final battle, when it does come, is slow moving at first. The pace gradually quickens, until the screen is full of galloping horses, swordplay, gunshots, and defeated bandits. It is made even more effective because, just an hour earlier, Kurosawa includes a sequence where Kambei and Gorobei peacefully stroll through the village with a map, planning strategy and getting the lay of the land. In the end, we get to see if their plans were successful, and, as an added bonus, are already well acquainted with every part of the terrain. It cuts the sense of disorientation in the audience, a drawback in such a large battle such as this one, down to a minimum.

A quick note about the music. Some scenes, especially the more dramatic moments, are scored by nothing but silence, save for a few natural sounds (running water, birds, horses hooves) or percussive man-made ones (bare drums, a turning mill). Kambei's head-shaving scene is a fine example of this, the silence underlying the drama. See also Kyuzo's introduction. But when music is called for, composer Fumio Hayasaka is more than up for the task. Each group (the samurais, the farmers, the bandits) has their own theme, modulated and mangled to suit the drama of the scene. Mifune's music, the most prominent amongst the individual samurais, is a mishmash of wild rhythms and plaintive wailing. It scores his character perfectly.

I've watched "Seven Samurai" two-and-a-half times in the last couple of days (quick math: that's about 8 1/2 hours worth of movie!), and it never loses any of its power or intensity. The complexity of the characters is impressive, and, despite the film's age and range of influence (I see where the "The Road Warrior" or "The Two Towers" got the gumption to stage their climactic battles) it never feels formulaic. I am still awed by Kurosawa's handling of the farmers. They are a group you'd think would hold your sympathy throughout. But in moments Kurosawa gives reason for the audience to actually resent them, despite their supposed helplessness. Such is the power and complexity of this film. I could watch it every day, and find something new to adore.

Quick notes on the DVD: "Seven Samurai" was the Criterion Collection's second ever DVD issue, and though it lacks the quantity of features that other DVDs in the collection are blessed with, the quality of what is here is certainly top-notch. Japanese film expert Michael Jack provides the audio commentary track. Once you get past the fact that Jack's voice sounds an awful lot like George Takei, the track is a true treat. He follows along with narrative, detailing at opportune moments Kurosawa's history, Mifune's history, possible interpretations of the film, shot selection, music selection, story points, etc., etc., etc. A fascinating track, that continues nonstop through out the film (save for the intermission; yes, the DVD includes an intermission. Imagine that!). Be warned, though, that the Theatrical Trailer included here should only be viewed after the film, as it gives away a pretty big plot point from the finale.

[Check out the entries of the other participants, many of whom (including our esteemed host) are also late in submitting: ingysdayoff (host) * alawson * lemon_lime * mfunk75 (c'est moi) * Stairway2Drew * hkoreeda * popsrocks * beckytcy * mashimaru * BeastieGirl.]

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD