The Seven Samurai

The Seven Samurai, from 1954, is considered to one of Akira Kurosawa's greatest films. It is an epic that hearkens back to the Westerns of John Ford (it was remade into a Western, The Magnificent Seven) but it distinctly Japanese. It is one of those films that everyone needs to see.

That asks a lot, because it is three and a half hours long (it was cut by fifty minutes for its American release, but is now available in its full length). To be sure there are scenes that seem drawn out, especially in the beginning, but I think this only adds to the powerful effect of the ending.

It is 16th century Japan. A small village has been tormented by bandits, who steal their crops (and, we learn, have done even more heinous things). A farmer overhears the bandits' plan to come back and take their barley after it harvests. Unsure what to do, they consult the village elder, who advises them to hire samurais to protect them.

The farmers can only pay in food, so have an initially hard time persuading any ronin (samurais without a master) to join them. The first they recruit, Tamashi Shimura, is a kindly older samurai, and once he agrees he figures it will take seven men to defend the village. He has an apprentice that he does not want to use, but is finally persuaded to. Eventually he has his seven men, including one, Toshiro Mifune, who often acts the buffoon, but insists on joining the team.

The samurai train the villagers, who will do their part by wielding spears. Its a slow dance between the samurai and the farmers, and there are trust issues. The samurai discover that the farmers have a lot of armor and weapons, that can only have been taken from dead samurai. On the other hand, a farmer is so mistrustful of them he cuts his daughter's hair and has her pretend to be a boy. This doesn't stop the apprentice and her falling in love.

The film is basically in two parts, the first being the recruitment and training, and then the attack by the bandits, which takes up well over an hour. It is thrilling stuff. I loved a scene when the stoic samurai, Seiji Miyaguchi, calmly enters the bandits camp to obtain a musket. He comes back, holding the musket, and tells Shimura that there are two more down (Shimura has a cloth on which he has thirty circles, representing the bandits, and he puts an X through the circles for every bandit killed).

The final attack comes in a driving rainstorm. Kurosawa often uses the rain to great effect (such as in Rashomon) that I wonder whether this was planned or not, as he does not appearing to be using a rain machine. Perhaps this was just serendipitous. In any event, the battle is thrilling and a few of the samurai get killed, but I won't say which ones.

The film owes a great deal to American Westerns. Often Kurosawa shoots through fences, which is a common angle in Westerns. The tension between hired guns and farmers is also a common element in Westerns, but in the Hollywood version, just like here, the gallantry of the characters, and their code, wins out.