- How did I make it this far in life without seeing Seven Samurai? The most honest answer is that it is a three-and-a-half hour foreign language film with a very deliberately paced first half hour, but the excuse I sometimes told myself was that, effectively, I had seen it. Certainly I had watched clips from the most famous parts of the movie and had read plenty of discussions about it. I had also observed its influence everywhere, notably including its direct adaptations into The Magnificent Seven and, oddly enough, A Bug's Life. The film even served as the explicitly acknowledged inspiration for an episode of The Clone Wars TV series. It's one of those immediately recognizable films where everyone more or less knows what happens, even if they haven't seen it. Well, now I've seen it for real.
- Since everybody knows the plot, let me jump into discussing the characters. Takashi Shimura, esteemed star of Rashomon and Ikiru, is absolutely perfect as the unflappable leader of the samurai, Kimbei. Some of the samurai (Yoshio Inaba, Minoru Chiaki, Daisuke KatÅ) are unexpectedly jolly, and others (Seiji Miyaguchi, Isao Kimura) remarkably serious. One thing that surprised me is the characterization of the final samurai, Kikuchiyo, who is very different from any other character played by Toshiro Mifune. An irresponsible, loud-mouthed hothead who aspires to be taken seriously, the only thing worse than having Kikuchiyo as your ally would be to have him as your enemy. There are other characters in the form of villagers (Yoshio Tsuchiya, Kamatari Fujiwara, and the eternally frowning Bokuzen Hidari), a love interest (Keiko Tsushima), and a villainous bandit (Shinpei Takagi), but none are as interesting as any of the samurai.
- So why is Seven Samurai one of the most highly-regarded films ever made, in Japan or anywhere else? To answer this question fully would exceed my self-imposed word limit by hundreds of pages. The fact is, this film does everything right in many ways that have never been topped. The battle scenes are so muddy and crowded that they imply a very real sense of danger, especially when horses are galloping wildly. The samurai themselves are not easily pigeonholed -- they're all heroic, but each is incomplete in a different way. The rain-soaked settings, constructed specifically for this film, are completely convincing. Akira Kurosawa's direction exhibits mood swings that capture the muted desperation of the villagers and the kinetic excitement of battle equally well. Asakazu Nakai's cinematography is flawless, and even the music (by Fumio Hayasaka) is great. Simply put, I regret not watching this masterpiece decades ago, but I won't hesitate to watch it again in the decades still to come.
