Blair Loveday
It has been said many times that Seven Samurai is one of the most important movies in history.
This 70 year old movie influenced some of the biggest classic movies of all time, but the question is, is it still worth watching today? How does it fare when compared to current movies?
Well the short answer is, yea it is still worth watching, and that’s coming from someone who just corrected the sin of not having seen it before.
For anyone new to the movie it tells the story of a small farming village in Japan during the Sengoku period (16th century). The village is filled with peasants and they are being constantly raided by bandits stealing the very limited resources they have, including the crops that they harvest and sell to survive. Getting sick of this, the village tries to find a way to stop them.
Unfortunately being peasants they don;t have the ability to fight, so they decide to try an enlist
some samurai.
The problem of course is they are poor. Some of the villagers make their way to a local town to try enlisting samurai. They manage to convince one to do it for some food who then enlists a few other samurai. They all have varying personalities which can erupt in very different ways at times. We then have some time as the samurai and the villagers learn to trust each other, and the village has time to build up defences and go on the attack at times.
The movie is well over three hours, and coming from a new perspective parts of the movie can feel long.
Fortunately, it deserves that time. The story that is crafted hits so much harder because we are given the time to appreciate all the characters, but also the relationships that develop.
This time also allows us to really appreciate the other aspects the story wants us to know.
Things like the class system back then is really kept in perspective, both with attitudes and
consequences of actions.
Something that really stands the test of time is the camera use. Long shots of people travelling through the forest are both impressive they pulled it off, and a treat to view on the screen. The action is exceptional for the time, and stand up well now thanks to the excellent film making in place. This release has had the footage cleaned up a lot and it looks amazing. The audio does still sound old school, but given it’s in Japanese you’ll be reading the subtitles so that’s gravy.
Seven Samurai is a shockingly good movie 70 years on. It feels like watching a classic western movie, which is less surprising when you realise that it inspired a lot of the classic westerns.
Don’t be intimidated by the age, the black and white, or the run time. This is still a movie you need to see. This Bluray comes with a fantastic special feature that lets you hear from the iconic Akira Kurosawa himself and is well worth enjoying after the epic flick.
