Directed by: Akira Kurosawa
Written by: Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto & Hideo Oguni
Let’s be honest here: this movie is excellent, but it was a wrong movie.
And by the wrong movie I mean our teacher made a mistake thinking it’s a good idea to make a class watch a movie that takes 3,5 hours. That’s way too long for us to sit on uncomfortable chairs, no matter how great the movie is. And it took us about 23 hours to finish that movie, since we had few breaks and a long lunch break and hey, we went home for a while and then returned the next morning... And I don’t think many of us were psyched about continuing the movie in the morning.
What made some of us even less psyched was that after we had finished the movie, our teacher went through it scene by scene telling us exactly why that scene is good and what’s important about that scene. And that took us about two days.
So instead of a three day long course about dramaturgy, it was a three day long course about Seven Samurais by Akira Kurosawa.
Even though I never want to see that movie again, mostly because of the past three days, I can’t deny this movie isn’t a masterpiece.
Watching this movie in 2017 is a whole different point of view to the movie than watching it like in the 1950s, 1960s... When I first watched it, I thought that the plot wasn’t anything special, it’s pretty typical. But as we discussed this with classmates, the thing is... This movie probably made that plot pretty typical, and it must’ve been something amazing when the movie first came out.
And as we went through the movie scene by scene, no matter how annoying that was at the time, there’s not a single useless thing about that plot. Of course it’s incredibly long and there are long scenes, but that can be a time thing or a place thing. But the story and the structure of the story is close to perfect, or at least to perfect as we know it, as we are used to thinking about the three act structure in plots.
And as an action movie on its own, Seven Samurais is amazing. It’s so emotional, which was a bit hard to grasp the first time, when I just wanted it to end and I wanted to go home. But after we viewed some scenes again, I actually understood them, and they actually hit me. And yes, some plot points are weird because of the cultural differences, but that doesn’t make them any less emotional. You might wonder why something happens, but it still hits you.
The biggest problem of the movie I can actually blame on the translator. The names of the characters were barely mentioned in the subtitles, so the first time watching it was really hard keeping a track of who is who. The first time the only ones I knew by name were Kikuchiyo and Shino. And since some of the scenes are so dark, it’s even harder to keep a track of who just died and who’s doing what, and when you don’t speak Japanese, you can’t trust your ears as much.
I absolutely adore this movie but also I kind of hate it because of the past three days. I hope to one day watch it and actually enjoy it, appreciate it properly. Right now I can just say, amazing movie, horrible experience.
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
10 / 10
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