There’s been enough crap on this blog lately, it’s time for something unmistakably great, a masterpiece of cinema the world over which, though it doesn’t boast a single sequel, is the basis for arguably the most remakes in film history.
Addressing the totality of Seven Samurai right off the bat is a fool’s errand. How to best assess the movie which opened up moviemaking both in Japan and cross-nationally, which merged the jidaigeki and western, made a great humanist statement, altered the course of the action genre, and cemented Akira Kurosawa as one of the top tier directors? There is a ridiculous lot to bite off, an embarrassment of riches.
Let us then think solely of why Seven Samurai of all movies would be remade so often. Beyond anything, it’s the story, a simple and iconic tale – which is not easy to do. It’s universal enough to be reapplied anywhere, but attentive to detail and somehow fundamentally Japanese – even if it sides against many popular Japanese notions of the time.
Such factors cannot be planned, though they can be recognized by great talent. Kurosawa at first simply sought to create a samurai movie, satisfying one of his nation’s genre requirements which he hadn’t (yet) dabbled in. Already he was a respected director – internationally, at least. Kurosawa’s former masterpieces, notably Rashomon and Ikuru (and other works like Drunken Angel) earned him Western attention, Americans so far unaware of foreign film markets. Yet Kurosawa was too Western, in the eyes of many fellow countrymen, espousing ideals antithetical to their own.
The very gist of Seven Samurai is the intermingling of castes, surely an anachronistic narrative for 16th century Japan. Even by 1954, this would’ve been odd in Japanese film, which was mostly concerned with echoing non-cinematic styles such as noh or kabuki. Kurosawa was more intent to take inspiration from Hollywood, notably John Ford westerns. Mixing those styles with his own personal tastes, Seven Samurai (and Kurosawa’s other works) are dynamic, modern, and a-national.
And that story is simple. Seven warriors are hired by a town to defend against 40 marauding bandits. The warriors thus successfully repeal the invaders.
That’s it! Simple doesn’t even cover it. With that, it should be some surprise that Seven Samurai is 3 ½ hours long. This is not to its detriment. Rather, every possible story step gets the fullest amount of attention necessary, giving every action a clarity one doesn’t often find. This is the “epic” mode of filmmaking, even when the overall numbers (40 bandits, an equal number of villagers, roughly) are hardly massive. There’s an epicness in tone, the notion of focusing wholly enough on so many different emotional modes, character mindsets, to give the feeling of completion and importance. In literary terms, this is the Dostoevsky mode, one of depth rather than breadth, that belonging rather to Tolstoy. (Hell, Kurosawa even adapted Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot.”) The end result, when watched, is of total engagement, where the smallest actions take on fuller weight than they would in most genuinely vast epics.
Seven Samurai opens in a way many unadventurous viewers perhaps picture all foreign movies opening: With undiluted misery. We’re with the farmers, who know they have only until harvest time before bandits descend to take everything they have. The acting is somewhat stylized (mostly), but still effective. But the thing is that is not the central tone of Seven Samurai, which rather moves on to its samurai characters to distinguish from the dour moroseness of the village.
These tonal shifts emphasize the class distinctions, something I’d rather not get hung up on. Instead, think of it as a meta-genre exercise, as we have examples of action, drama, comedy, romance, war, horror, adventure, all mixed together with such generosity. I can name few films which attempt such a width of styles, even fewer which effectively compress them all into a unified piece. Buster Keaton’s The General, perhaps; for others might cite maybe Gone With the Wind. War movies, usually, for whatever reason.
It takes over an hour for the samurai team to be assembled, and not a minute is wasted. Indeed, Seven Samurai is one of those films that’s so solidly built, it feels quicker than it really is. We are with the farmers alone for quite some time before they even get to know the first of the seven…
Takashi Shimura fulfills his lengthy Kurosawa career as Kambei, the lead samurai. His introduction is a wonderfully self-contained bit of incident, as Kambei shaves his head to resemble a priest, all so he may rescue a hostage from a thief. What follows defines Kurosawa’s approach to action filmmaking, still in its infancy, with a most assured command of space, pace and editing. Kambei confronts the thief out of view. Lots of ambient noises follow. In deathly silence, the thief’s fate occurs in slow motion, perhaps the first action cinema usage of that technique. Add to that depth of frame, brass but informed cinematography, et cetera. These moments of violence, when they come, are all delivered with similar poise, the intent always effortlessly clear.
The travelling villagers press Kambei. As a ronin, he acknowledges the compensation is nonexistent, the danger great, the prospects dire. Why does Kambei agree to defend this thankless town?! That is a question, for all the samurai, which Seven Samurai always dances around, hinting at without making the blunder to state outright. There is the possibility Kambei does it for the “challenge,” for the “fun.” It could do with caste, or with archetypal roles. The point is, it’s open to interpretations, which strengthen one’s deeper reading of the piece without ever confusing the top-level story.
Like the First Act of a heist film, Kambei leads the recruitment of fellow warriors, aided by his naive new apprentice Katsushirō Okamoto (Isao Kimura, formerly of Kurosawa’s Stray Dog). With successes and setbacks, and enough scenes of drama to make this segment its own mini-movie, they discover the other five.
Shichirōji (Daisuke Katō) is a former commander for Kambei, back when each had a master. His reasons for joining concern his wistful remembrance of past times. Shichirōji is a tactician on a par with thoughtful Kambei, and essential in any siege scenario.
Actually, all seven boast well-defined personas, conveyed skillfully enough to read as personalities. The least distinct of the bunch, perhaps, is Gorōbei Katayama (Yoshio Inaba), who represents that sort of basically competent, stout fellow each team needs. You know, as a baseline for the others to read off against.
Heihachi Hayashida (Minoru Chiaki, and all of these men are Kurosawa regulars) distinguishes himself largely through his genial good humor, which makes up for his relative inexperience on the battlefield.
Meanwhile, Kyūzō (Seiji Miyaguchi) is simply the best, as least as far as pure swordsmanship goes, a man out for the pure artistry of the fight. He will be invaluable.
With the group fully assembled, and with indicative intros for each, it’s back to the village to –
What’ that? There’s only six? And they’re all a mostly self-serious lot at that?
Well, that was Kurosawa’s personal thought in the scripting stage, when six was initially called for. He knew he must balance his picture, and create a total counter to the self-loathing of the farmers. This calls for a seventh samurai, Kikuchiyo (Toshirō Mifune).
Toshirō Mifune is the actor best associated with Akira Kurosawa, as he became Kurosawa’s iconic hero in many other period samurai jidaigeki, 16 in total. Still, Takashi Shimura is in more of Kurosawa’s work. Each appears in a characteristic role in Seven Samurai, Shimura the wise leader, and Mifune a bragging, boisterous, temperamental rapscallion. Each can be read as a paragon of machismo, in distinct ways, if you must make such a reading, and each carries different parts of Kurosawa’s tonal message.
Kikuchiyo is the secret weapon to Seven Samurai, with a personality and history we’ll learn over time. He starts out as a mere satellite to the six “official” samurai, himself not even born into the caste to begin with, and otherwise lacking in the refinements by which the samurai define themselves. Kikuchiyo is a ball of energy, constantly laughing and changing mood, purely emotive. Kambei & Ko. see no value in him.
That is, until they reach the village. We’ve spent enough time in the samurai’s presence, we are completely a part of their story now, even if we started with the villagers. And here, the weeping, gnashing, cowardly farmers do their dangest to lose whatever compassion we initially felt. They hide away from the samurai, the men they asked to come to their aide, so fearful are these reason-challenged peasants. Kikuchiyo exposes the depths of their hypocrisies by ringing the town’s Bandit Bell™. The villagers suddenly rush to the same samurai they’d just shunned, pleading for protection. His point made, Kikuchiyo is at last allowed onto Kambei’s team.
New facets to characters keep on emerging. The farmers’ complexities continue apace, as Kikuchiyo soon discovers certain weapons which could only be attained by robbing samurai. There is some suggestion the farmers are as predatory as the bandits they fear – another moment of inter-class violence employed to highlight the foolishness of these class distinctions.
In one of the greatest moments in Mifune’s acting career, he stalks around decked out in these ill-gotten warrior accoutrements, ranting to his “fellow” samurai. In a single shot, full of movement and fury, bipolar Kikuchiyo exposes every failing and fault he sees in farmers as a class. In fact, more information than he, a so-called samurai, should know.
Kambei points out the obvious – obvious because Kurosawa’s skill at intimating is masterful: Kikuchiyo was born a farmer. In all of Seven Samurai, the classist reading, Kikuchiyo becomes the lynchpin. He is without identity, without social sphere; he doesn’t even know his name, “Kikuchiyo” being from a stolen scroll. To emphasize Kikuchiyo’s difference, Kurosawa allowed Mifune to improvise so very much when the rest of the cast is perfectly mannered (at least by Western standards; in Japan, they’re quite loose). There is no question this why Mifune is as much an icon as Kurosawa is.
Another subplot has a similar feel, but in a totally different way. Highlighting the eternal difference between samurai and the working class, the farmers hide their daughters, suspecting the worst of intentions. Ironically, it is the girl who’s specifically warned against samurai who falls for one – Shino (Keiko Tsushima) falls for young Katsushirō. Their romantic subplot has a bit of the “Romeo & Juliet” forbidden love thing about it. This comes of class. But romance is a different way to phrase a similar notion, and it never wears out its welcome.
For in warfare, desperate romances are expected, and valuable as relief. Of course, the warfare angle of Seven Samurai is conveyed as effectively as anything else. The samurai instantly start devising their defenses, shown to us with the wonderfully efficient use of a map. We are host to entire debates on different strategies, the sum result being a thorough familiarity with the town’s geography. This means, when the eventual battles begin well over 2 hours in, the stakes will be entirely clear – making 7 samurai vs. 40 bandits all the more weighty.
There’s plenty at play. Hayashida fashions a flag to represent their team – six circles and one triangle representing Kikuchiyo. This banner becomes a persistent symbol. A similar ploy – and I’m skipping ahead here – is Kambei’s method of counting off the remaining enemy bandits. Another map, another banner, a series of 40 circles progressively crossed out over time. A wonderful “ticking clock” sort of counter, if you will, and a simply visual means for reducing the film’s central climactic conflict to its simplest form.
Some details of Kambei’s plan: He hopes to minimize the town’s access points, to flood the fields after the harvest. The farmers moan and wail and gnash their teeth. A fence is constructed, to enclose the majority of town, at the expense of three outlying shacks. The farmers moan and wail and gnash their teeth. All able-bodied men are trained in the art of spearing. The farmers moan and – Well you get the idea. They’re pretty damn uncooperative, for a hamlet of helpless pessimists. Hell, I’ve known many people just like them. It takes the intervention of Kikuchiyo, the only one able to understand both viewpoints, to turn them around, to rally the farmers together in unity, not the unity of the classist old Japan, but a new, humanist unity.
INTERMISSION
The second half concerns the physical battle, now we’ve prepared for it. In wonderful contrast to the general gloominess which accompanied the farmers’ war prep, they engage in harvest with a smile and a song – even though this act is what will directly lead to the bandits’ arrival. Still, farming is their natural lot in life, their duty by birth, and we’ll see this scene paralleled again at the film’s completion – one could make a grand exercise of identifying parallels between scenes in this way.
And while things are tonally jolly, Kurosawa engages in some studied comic relief, courtesy of Toshiro Mifune. He commits physical tomfoolery with a horse, and it’s a sign of a deft hand that such silliness never grates against the darker moments.
The bandits make themselves known shortly afterwards, with a few scouts. The farmers instantly revert into a trembling, quivering mass of incompetence, but at least they had the foresight to hire samurai. The scouts are captured, the bandits’ stronghold located, and a small party of samurai heads out on a preliminary mission to damage the bandits ahead of time.
Kikuchiyo heads along at his own insistence. Kyūzō goes, because he’s a master warrior. Hayashida, because he’s expendable (spoiler, I guess). The mission concludes with the total, unmitigated burning of the bandits’ fort, and with a little more drama concerning one farmer’s wife (this being one of the hidden character contradictions you must watch to experience). Hayashida’s death spoils the mood a little, but the samurai have made a grand opening statement.
The bandits attack the town right on cue, something they shall do with imperturbable regularity, no matter how successfully the samurai whittle them away. One could question the bandits’ persistence, against all notions of self-preservation. Well, there’s desperation, and the need for revenge, both a result of their camp’s destruction. There’s also their terrifying captain, who prods them on. Then again, raiding is their duty. Not just in terms of the bandit “class,” but even as a narrative device. It’s a bandit’s lot in life – doomed to be a faceless “other,” for we never get good glimpses into their plight.
With raids upon the village legitimately commencing, Kurosawa devises another, er, device to commemorate the passing action: the graveyard. For even as the bandits’ ranks sap, so do the village’s, and the samurai’s. The mounds of dead on the hill are one of Seven Samurai’s most famous images, which rather recalls The Seventh Seal’s conclusive Danse Macabre – but don’t let that make Seven Samurai seem an impenetrable dirge, for it is truly a rich adventure! For even as death grows in symbolic strength, Hayashida’s original banner retains its power and positivity.
The battles possess the same sort of defensive desperation of many a siege tale, from westerns like Rio Bravo, actions like Assault on Precinct 13, horrors like Night of the Living Dead. Seven Samurai IS an action film, if you must boil it down to a single genre (withholding niche subgenres like jidaigeki). This is not because that’s its primary mode, but that’s where Seven Samurai has been most decisively influential. Many variations on the same scenario play out, each highlighting different forms of action filmmaking, from suspenseful to frantic. This is without even the sort of precious choreography that would become the genre’s focus. It’s all more basic than that, action as narrative, and a wonderful picture for a true action connoisseur.
Because Seven Samurai has devoted 2 ½ hours now to getting us invested in this battle, it can make emotional points with great efficiency. Honestly, I falsely recalled the warfare as occupying a greater portion of this movie, for how much content exists in the end. That’s how useful a thorough prologue is! And the battles are more engaging because we can always refer to a new character, from a samurai to a farmer, and get a new perspective. Thus running us through the gambit of potential emotions and moods, from proactive stick-to-itiveness to quivering pity.
Getting back to the question of how Seven Samurai works as an action movie… Many an action picture, especially with modern editing approaches (which Kurosawa does anticipate), can become confusing. There are moments of confusion in Seven Samurai, often achieved by the same means: hyper-editing (for 1954), awkward choreography. But this is not a fault! In these moments, the battle itself is confusing, and would be for the combatants therein. These are moments of genuine, intentional chaos, of an altogether cosmic scale, something Kurosawa does like none other.
Such chaos, such fearful desperation, becomes the dominant mode towards the end, as the outside bandit threat dwindles. Those final 13 who remain are reduced to the level of sheer wild beasts. And nature itself seems angered, in that distinctly Kurosawa way – no one does better rain, or wind, or mud or sleet or you name it! Highlighting nature is a) wonderfully cinematic, and b) a good way to unify humanity as a whole and reduce the classes.
The final half hour, the character moments and the conclusive showdown, all have a power write-ups cannot do justice. No new major revelations come, even into the greater meaning of the film. Well…save for the final scene, which culminates the battle/graveyard imagery into its final form, and draws the ultimate distinction between the samurai and the farmers.
“Again we’re defeated. The winners are those farmers, not us.”
Seven Samurai’s legacy owes little to simply the remakes and homages in its wake. They don’t hurt. It stands on its own, as one of the great overall testaments to film as a medium. There are no less than four Criterion essays on the piece, which is mighty impressive. This is a film which influenced so very much of the basic filmmaking grammar afterwards, yet remains as watchable today as ever. Seven Samurai is, by most estimations, one of the greatest movies ever made.
But of those remakes…Some films which owe Seven Samurai a debt of gratitude have no official connection to it. Those are films such as Ocean’s Eleven and The Dirty Dozen and The Great Escape – any manly movie featuring a large group of heroes. Others are closer in structure, yet still stand simply as pastiches or variations – I’m thinking here mostly of things like ¡Three Amigos! and A Bug’s Life. But then there are the genuine remakes, those which openly credit Seven Samurai. As I write, I count eight remakes, from all over the world! And the first (and most famous) of those, The Magnificent Seven, even inspired a franchise itself.
RELATED POSTS:
• No. 2 The Magnificent Seven (1960)
• No. 3 Kill a Dragon (1967)
• Nos. 4 - 8 (1979 - 1993)
• No. 9 China Gate (1998)
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