Japan was another one of those ‘easy’ countries when it came to completing this project. Not only does the country produce a huge amount of films per year, but a good portion of their work is accessible to people living on the other side of the Pacific. Albeit much like the United States, this is a country where there was so much to choose from that I didn’t even know where to begin. Between the anime work of Hayao Miyazaki, Satoshi Kon, and Katsuhiro Otomo, the cult films of Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, the yakuza films of Takeshi Kitano, the sadistic, graphic fare of Takashi Miike, as well as the work of more ‘classic’ auteurs like Yasujirō Ozu and Akira Kurosawa, one doesn’t have to dig too deep into Japanese cinema culture before they’re confronted with an embarrassment of riches. Given how diverse and eclectic its cinema product can be, some may view my selection of Kurosawa’s 1954 masterpiece as a rather unimaginative, conventional pick.
Despite being produced nearly 70 years ago and nearly halfway around the world, access to the film in the US is not a problem. This is likely a consequence of the film being highly revered by western critics and other dignitaries from the film industry for decades. While the film was initially released to American theaters in 1956, in order to convey its’ persistent popularity and cultural relevance during the latter half of the 20th century, consider the fact that it was re-released into American theaters in 2002 where it still pulled in 6 figures at the box office. As for the distribution of copies through recorded media, I could write pages detailing the numerous releases of the film, which would include multiple formats, as well as box sets and compilations. For the sake of brevity, the two most accessible editions in the US are its 1998 and 2006 DVD releases, both of which were published by the Criterion Collection. For this critique I watched the 1998 edition (this is the one where the DVD cover shows a samurai resting a sword on his left shoulder). According to worldcat.org copies of the film were being held at 17 public libraries within a 20 mile radius of where I live. Within 40 miles the number of public libraries would be 57. Overall there’s roughly 1200 holdings for this title worldwide. Copies can also be purchased from an innumerable number of retailers both online and off, streamed on a large number of different platforms that include Amazon Prime, Vudu, YouTube, Apple TV, The Criterion Channel among others and rented out from Facets.
In spite of the film’s length, the narrative was not particularly complex. Probably the most notable plot point occurred within the first 4 minutes of the film when a farmer inadvertently learned of a plan by bandits to invade and ransack their village after the harvest, at a time when it would have been the most profitable for them to do so. This prompted the farmers to contemplate hiring a team of samurais in order to protect their village. The majority of the film then became split between the time it took to assemble the team of samurais, the time spent preparing the village for the inevitable invasion and the climatic battles with the bandits. I didn’t mind the lengthy setup that got employed before getting to the action scenes at the end. For one the length of the film helped to establish the impossibility of the task that was laid before the farmers. There was a sense of realism attained when we see potential samurais turn down the offer, due to how unappealing the proposition was. Why any of the samurais would ultimately accept such a duty was not really well established. But then again none of them seemed to be preoccupied with other affairs and ultimately one has to put their training and expertise to use; glory be damned. The length of the film also afforded a greater commitment towards the character development, which was excellent. The fact that the team consisted of a youthful samurai who was light on experience and a drunken joker who only pretended to be a samurai drove home the rag-tag nature of the assembled crew. It added a touch of the underdog element to the narrative. Given how many characters are featured in the story along with their personal back stories and subplots, the narrative had a density that kept the film from incurring any pacing issues. Beyond this some of the characters where so colorful and dynamic that they almost effortlessly garnered engagement with the viewer. This was none truer than in the case of Kikuchiyo played by Toshiro Mifune.
There was something electric about Mifune’s performance that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Perhaps there was something delightful and cheerful in the character’s sheer giddiness at seeing invaders march towards the village. To see the pure zeal in which someone would anticipate a potentially fatal encounter, made me contemplate their mental health on one hand, but on the other made me inherently fascinated with the character. I also enjoyed his odd, yet hypnotic body language when approaching the other samurais while drunk as well as his passionate, emphatic speech about the secret wealth of the farmers. Mifune did not simply recite his lines, he ‘performed’ them through every muscle of his body. Mifune delivered an incredibly vivid, physical performance.
What made have been the most symbolic scene of Mifune’s performance though came near the end of the film. In a rare moment of despondency following the death of a fellow samurai, Kikuchiyo was offered some saké. Consistent with his character, Mifune naturally bypassed the suggested bowl and instead grabbed the entire jug in order to gulp it down in a frantic, haphazard fashion. Everything about the character was done at ‘full throttle’. And despite the intensity of the performance, Mifune was able to successfully play Kikuchiyo as sort of a crazed buffoon who effectively offered a sense of comic relief not only to the other characters in the story but to the viewer as well. Mifune’s performance in this film should be regarded as one of most passionate, yet entertaining and compelling that the world of cinema as ever seen. It was a fantastic, incredibly enthralling performance that could carry a film of any length.
While the rest of the cast were considerably more austere in their portrayals when compared to Mifune, there was still some good work to be appreciated. Takashi Shimura gave Kambei the steady poise and confidence to believably depict what was essentially the de facto general of the unit. His performance was one that contained a great deal of complexity and nuance. Shimura could credibly show a brute forcefulness when questioning the villagers about the bandit alarm and yet could just as easily laugh joyfully at Kikuchiyo’s stolen family scroll without any hint that he was breaking character. I also liked his performance after Mifune’s ‘farmer speech’. Here he handled the heavy silence of the scene well and replied with the perfect touch of caution. Some of the best lines of dialogue in the film were written for Shimura’s character, which allowed him to cast Kambei as a venerable samurai of considerable wisdom. While I can only assess this aspect from the English subtitles, the written dialogue was good, with numerous uses of short phrases that would contain some salient, philosophic depth. At times I got the impression that the film wanted to explore the basic art and philosophy of warfare. A good example of this occurred when Kambei commented that they’ll lose the war if they only attempted to defend themselves.
As for the other actors, Isao Kimura did a good job as the young, neophyte samurai Katsushiro. His character’s fledgling nature really came through in how easily awestruck he was at the courage and bravery of the more experienced samurais. One can also sense this in how timid Kimura played the role when Katsushiro approached the likes of Kambei or Kyuzo. Seiji Miyaguchi was another interesting performer. Largely poker faced and emotionless, he presented Kyuzo as a samurai of exceptional skill and acumen. The aura of exemplary professionalism that one got from Miyaguchi offered an intriguing polar counterweight to the loose cannon ambiance of Mifune’s Kikuchiyo. Beyond this the performances of Minoru Chiaki as Heinachi and Yoshio Inaba as Gorobei both offered a warm, affable charm to the film. I find it amazing to consider the diversity in character that existed among the titular samurais. Between the old and the young, the skillful and the novices, the serious minded and the energetically comical, the acting in this film did a great job of establishing all the separate, distinct personalities of the samurais. While Seven Samurai may ultimately be a war film in its climax, the acting allowed one to see the combatants as human beings before they ever see them as warriors.
Some of the acting from the farmers were also noteworthy. Bokuzen Hidari’s near constant countenance of strained agony in his performance of Yohei really left an impression. I also liked some of the emotion and dramatic intensity that you get from Kamatari Fujiwara as Manzo and Yoshio Tsuchiya as Rikichi. A good example of this came early in the film in a heated exchange between the two characters. Here the up close, intimate framing did a great job of capturing how intense both actors performed the material.
As for the cinematography, I was struck by how exquisitely staged and framed many of the film’s shots were. During the scenes when the samurais were at rest within a residence, the filmmakers did an exceptional job of filling up the frame of a shot with a minimum of wasted space. They often found the perfect balance between intimacy, and a desire to show the acting of as many characters as possible. Consider the scene when Kambei responded to Kikuchiyo’s farmer speech. In the close up shot of Kambei, he was still flanked by Shichiroji and Heihachi allowing the viewer to see how they reacted as well, which added to the richness of this scene. In addition to this I often liked the wonderful interplay that existed between the foreground and background information of a shot. This element was evident early on when one saw Kikuchiyo knock over a bucket to take a seat, while he watched Kambei enter a house to kill the thief. Beyond its excellent framing and mise-en-scène, the film also showed good competency at working with motion. I thought the spinning shot of Gorobei as he provided instructions to an army of spear-wielding farmers was one of the more interesting takes in the film.
The only thing I could really complain about were its antiquated aspects like the use of black and white imagery or wipe transitions which I suspect spoke as much to the necessities of the era in which the film was produced than anything else. Such limitations though may have also negatively impacted its action sequences. I didn’t like the fact that Kambei’s killing of the thief or Kyuzo’s personal conquest to secure a firearm were staged off camera. I think both of these segments would have been shot differently in modern times where the skill that each character had in warfare would have been better captured. Also the battle scenes were not framed nearly as well as the rest of the film. When you combine this with the rapid fire jump cutting and the poor sequencing, the action sequences were rather tepid by contemporary standards, although the final battle scene between Kikuchiyo and the bandit leader was still well shot. In the end Seven Samurai was perhaps a strange film in that the quality of the climax came across as inferior to that of the buildup. Nonetheless the excellence seen in the latter did more than enough to ensure its status as one of the best films ever made.