The Seven Samurai (1954, Akira Kurosawa)

The Seven Samurai is an example of film making at its highest level. I saw it for the first time in my first year of college; It is the first film I've seen of Akira Kurosawa. It’s also the first film that comes to mind when we think of Kurosawa and is probably the most highly acclaimed director from Japan (along side Yasujirô Ozu).

The story begins in Japan in the early 1600’s with a poor town being robbed, raped and murdered by bandits. The bandits then come to the town again but decide to visit the town when the barley has fully grown. One of the town members finds out it’s going to be robbed again and of course tells the town the disturbing news.

The town of course is absolutely terrified and are in a state of panic and don’t know what to do. Some wish to just give the bandits their food and beg them to leave them enough food to last them the winter. Some wish to kill themselves since they cannot stand this life of sorrow and pain. But a few wish to take a stand and fight back. They then take it up with the eldest member of the town and agrees to fight back but since they are farmers and do not know how to fight, he tells them to hire samurai.  But the town is a very poor town so he tells the people to find ‘hungry’ samurai, samurai that will work for a sum of three meals a day.

This film is so exquisitely made that it ranks as possibly one of the greatest films ever made. It has such superb scenes especially the final battle scenes in the heavy rain, such beauty on screen… words cannot describe. There is also another beautiful sad scene where the two leading actors Kambei & Kikuchiyo (Takashi Shimura & Toshirô Mifune) find a mother who has been murdered but she has saved her new born son and Kikuchiyo holds the boy and starts to cry “This is me… this is exactly what happened to me!” That scene always brings tears to my eyes.

Like many other Kurosawa film, it has inspired other films such as he terrific western remake of this film (the American version of The Seven Samurai) called The Magnificent Seven from 1960 which is also a great film. It stared Yul Brynner and the great Steve McQueen in the role that made him a star. The film also to some extent influenced The 13th Warrior as well as it also shares the main idea of hiring men to save a town, in this case, Vikings and one Arab.

I have also heard that Steven Spielberg, one of our finest directors who gave us such masterpieces as Schindler's List, Raiders Of The Lost Ark and many others watches this film every time he sets out to make a film of his own, along with three other great films, Lawrence of Arabia, The Searchers & It’s a Wonderful Life.

It’s a script like this that makes a film like this a real treasure in any genre and it’s directors like Akira Kurosawa that turn a film into something worth cherishing the rest of your life.

Rating: Masterpiece

Click here for the trailer

Written: June 6th 2008