Why have I never seen this before?

Seven Samurai

I have this very bad tendency of complaining about best 10 films lists, because I personally find them less good. They are certainly all good films – just not that great. For those that I have seen, this statement can easily be extended to the best 20 films in the 1000 Greatest Films, though I was highly impressed by “8 1/2” and absolutely love “Sunrise”. But now, there is “Seven Samurai”.

Oh my, it’s that good! 3 1/2 hours of goodness! Considering what a dramatic story this is, Kurosawa managed to insert some slow, but incredibly suspenseful scenes. Ahhh. I spent most of the film speculating about what is going to happen, and expected a manly tearfest at the end of the film, similar to “Silmido”. But I didn’t realize that Kurosawa is a storyteller, not one who builds up on cheap sentiments. “Seven Samurai” is a fascinating mélange of a very realistic story but with clichéd, staple characters – except in this case, “Seven Samurai” is the one that set the cliché, it is everybody else who followed the pattern.

I am a little sad that some of the samurai didn’t get as much screentime as I thought they deserved. Kikuchiyo (lovingly referred to by yours truly as Chiyo-chan) was clearly the main character, as he was given a tragic past and perhaps contributed the most to the success of the whole thing. Head-scratching Kambei and amazingly capable, avid runner Kyuzo also got a lot of screen time, which made me happy. But they could have made more out of Heihachi who ended up being nothing but this worthless villager’s friend, or the other good-natured fellow who immediately agreed to help.

Well, the villagers. Perhaps the best portrait of the whole story, with the fathers scared that their daughters might get raped, the village elder who doesn’t want to leave his house (but annoyingly also drags his family in) and many, many crying people. Oh God they cried too much. It’s a very sad asian custom to do that, ugh. At the same time, I have a strong sympathy and dislike for those villagers, and was deeply impressed by Chiyo-chan’s outburst of anger when speaking about them. I thought those few lines were the creation of genius. It reminded me a little bit of the end of M, or some of the lines of Hindemith’s Cardillac. And of course all this “Society made these people evil” kind of talk sounds very communistic, in the Marxian sense, but hey, don’t we secretly all agree?

I think this movie is a masterpiece, much more so than “Rashomon”. I am still reluctant to believe that Kurosawa really is the best Japanese director of his time (especially since I think I like “Ukigusa” even more, I have a much deeper adoration for Teshigahara’s style and have never seen a Mizoguchi). Nevertheless, “Seven Samurai” is an absolute must-see; you can’t call yourself japanophile without having seen this.