(207 minutes with intermission)
Directed by: Akira Kurosawa
Language: Japanese
Rating: 10/10 | Yaser Tohidi
March 15, 2020
To defend their village against an imminent attack by bandits, villagers decide to hire samurai. A group of seniors go to the city and luckily find a talented samurai who not only accepts the mission despite the low pay-off but also arranges further search for more samurai. A group of seven forms and enters the village. They plan the defense using also the villagers. Finally, the attack starts and the bandits are faced with strong defense by the village. Samurai and the villagers succeed to kill all the bandits although they loss some lives including four of the samurai.
This is the simple story based upon which Seven Samurai is written. But the movie goes much deeper into the relations and life of villagers and samurai. The movie starts by showing the vulnerability of farmers to the attacks from bandits. They have bad memories of brutalities also from samurai. They have no protection against these. But there might still be some noble samurai, and this forms their only hope for living. In the search for samurai and after having little success initially, they come across a strange scene; a senior samurai, Kambei, dresses up as a monk and shaves his head to save a child from the hands of a kidnapper. He shows a great talent by saving the child with bare hands but above that he proves that noble samurai still exist. Kambei might accept this difficult mission for only a handful of rice every day. Villagers go after him to talk about their problem. There are also two junior samurai amused by Kambei’s talent, one is very descent, Katsushiro, and the other, Kikuchyo, is not. Kambei accepts the mission. He is a wise leader. He starts immediately finding more samurai together with Katsushiro. Kikuchiyo shows interest in following Kambei but he has no idea what for. Therefore, he leaves. Finding one by one talented and noble samurai and looking for the last one, they face gain Kikuchiyo. He is also a good fighter but with no discipline. Even though he is not selected, he follows them. He should have another motivation. Later we find out that he is not born a samurai but in a farmer family and he lost them in an attack by bandits. This makes him enthusiastic for this mission. Because of his background, he builds a good relationship with villagers. During the attack, he shows great bravery although his careless acts sometimes add to the cost of the mission. He dies at the end but not before he kills the head of the bandits. A deeper bond between samurai and villagers, or better to say, another significant rebellion against social traditions and cast definitions happen by love of Katsushiro and the young girl of a villager. She is dressed up as a boy by his father in the fear of samurai. Katsushiro is enjoying the nature around the village when he faces her. He first thinks he is a boy and questions her why she is not practicing with other boys. This first encounter fires a forbidden love between a farmer girl and a samurai that remains till the end and even if they try to keep it hidden, it becomes known to everybody.
Seven Samurai is full of details in setting the interior and exterior locations which camera brings into the picture and the mise en scène utilizes for deepening the story and creating a great movie. Seven Samurai is a drama about teamwork and rejoining of different casts in society when it comes to protecting a good cause.
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