BIG'S BIG MOVIE LIST

     Samurai were warriors in feudal Japan from about 1000-1800AD, typically held on retainer by a daimyo (feudal lord) to protect his lands and go to war for him when necessary. A samurai without a daimyo (called a ronin) would sometimes seek steady employment as a mercenary, or might take up with bandits or highwaymen to pillage the countryside. In the case of director Akira Kurosawa's “Seven Samurai”, our titular heroes are neither paid mercenaries nor bandits, but rather simply a ragtag group brought together for a noble cause.

 

     The story of “Seven Samurai” revolves around a small peasant village of about 100 people (Kurosawa composed backstories and family trees for each of the peasant actors so they could better understand their roles) that is faced with grave news : a group of forty or more bandits have scouted their territory and aim to raid their village once their crops have ripened. The hermitic patriarch of the village, aptly referred to as “Old Man”, advises the villagers to hire ronin to protect the village. A group of farmers set out to town to seek out help, and in so doing they happen upon the kind-hearted veteran samurai Kambei Shimada (Takashi Shimura). In spite of the fact that the peasants can only offer rice and lodging as payment, Kambei accepts their proposal to help protect their village. He quickly discerns that due to the physical layout of the village and surrounding geography, they will need no fewer than seven samurai to effectively protect the village.

 

     This film is an epic, three and a half hour long work of cinematic beauty. That being said, it also took me nearly 24 hours to get through it, watching in installments. Like I've said before, I'm a child of the digital age and my attention span is shot to hell, so when I sit down to a black and white film with subtitles, I'm fighting an uphill battle wearing a backpack full of rocks. In spite of this, I found the film just worthwhile enough. It was historically enriching as well as a meaningful and at times tender exploration of the personalities and character of the eclectic samurai.

 

     The set was constructed in the countryside of the Shizuoka prefecture (at the insistence of Kurosawa and much to the chegrin of the production executives at Toho Studios) which was much more cumbersome and expensive than shooting on a studio lot, but I feel it made a world of difference for the authenticity and overall feel of the setting.

 

Apparently, “Seven Samurai” is one of the first instances in a film in which a group of heroes are recruited and gathered into a team to achieve a specific goal, a practice that is now a well-worn plot device in the industry (see: A Bug's Life, Guns of a Navarone, Inglorious Basterds, The Avengers, and on and on). Other archetypes, such as the reluctant hero, or a romance between the local girl and the youngest of the heroes, while appearing in other films prior, were perviously not concentrated into a story such as they are in “Seven Samurai”.