Seven Samurai

Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai has become such an ingrained part of pop culture that it's hard to come at it from a completely objective angle. Modern viewers will recognise well-worn archetypal characters and tropes of action-adventure filmmaking, and as a result may miss the inventiveness of Seven Samurai due to how cliched a lot of it has become. With this in mind, it's actually quite amazing that a lot of Seven Samurai still has that dynamic spark and survives as a truly wonderful epic of medieval Japan.

The story is quite a simple one... desperate farmers learn of an impending attack from bandits and decide to hire some samurai to protect their village. The first portion of the film follows the assembly of the seven samurai, each one drawn to the villagers via promises of glory, altruism and acceptance. It's the progenitor of what has become known as 'getting the band back together' (courtesy of The Blues Brothers), a protracted sequence that introduces us to each of these wildly different characters and their motivations as they band together. After that it's a story of pathetic farmers and the adventurous Samurai who team up with them, the incompatibility of their world views, and the bandit onslaught that will test the mettle of them all. The film plays through this story with several interwoven subplots, many of which have since become an intrinsic part of many action films.

The greatest aspect of the story is, without a doubt, the samurai of the title. The ronin are presented like the rockstars of feudal Japan, a self-sufficient caste of elite individuals who live by an honour code that sets them above regular folk. A lot of the main dramatic thrust of the film comes from the friction that arises between the samurai and the farmers... for instance, a samurai acts in accordance to their conscience (to some degree) and won't kill a prisoner of war who begs for mercy. A farmer on the other hand will do whatever it takes to survive... a farmer will lie, hide their food, kill a wounded stranger for his possessions, and happily take revenge on those who have wronged them (despite their pleas for mercy). A samurai doesn't know the sufferent a farmer endures though, and therefore has no conception of what drives them live outside of honour. This tension comes to a head via the relationship of the youngest samurai and a farmer's daughter.

Seven Samurai explores what it means to be a real samurai. These are heroes with doubts, humility and personal pain - a Japanese mirror for the increasingly adult characterisations that were coming to bear in American westerns at the time (the 1950s). Kurosawa uses groundbreaking techniques such as slow motion and horizontal wipes to keep the action fluid and interesting. He's also able to hold up such a relentless cacophony of action and battle scenes due to the level of depth he invests in the characters and the way he delves into the very philosophy of warfare itself. At first it's the farmers we feel sorry for, but by the film's end our sympathies lie with the samurai - a lonely caste whose only currency are their lives.

Of the seven samurai the standouts are Kambei (Takashi Shimura), the experienced and easy-going leader of the group, Kyuzo (Seiji Miyaguchi), the cool-as-ice master swordsman who hates killing, and Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune), a real dickhead and a samurai-wannabe who turns out to be the most complex character of them all. Mifune actually provides equal doses of comedy and pathos... I mean, how can you dislike a film where a samurai prances around in a historically-accurate costume that leaves his arsecheeks completely bare? Like the best adventures, it's a story of humour, sacrifice, courage and friendship.

DIRECTOR: Akira Kurosawa
WRITER/SOURCE: Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni, inspired by historical research undertaken by Kurosawa.
KEY ACTORS: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Seiji Miyaguchi, Isao Kimura, Yoshio Inaba, Bokuzan Hidari, Kamitari Fujiwara, Yoshio Tsuchiya

RELATED TEXTS:
- Remade as the western The Magnificent Seven, and later as a sci-fi film called Battle Beyond the Stars. The western inspired three sequels: Return of the Seven, Guns of the Magnificent Seven and The Magnificent Seven Ride, as well as a late 1990s television series also called The Magnificent Seven.
- Seven Samurai was Kurosawa's first samurai film, he would go on to make several others, including: Throne of Blood, Yojimbo, Hidden Fortress, Sanjuro, Kagemusha and Ran.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - nominations Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design.
BAFTAs - nominations Best Film, Best Actor (Shimura) and Best Actor (Mifune).
Venice Film Festival - won Silver Lion award. Nominated for Golden Lion.