Seven Samurai

Akira Kurosawa 1954 (suom. "Seitsemän samuraita")

Well, one probably cannot praise this film enough and the millions of analyses/PhD theses and so forth made about it should objectively pinpoint why it's so great. What I remarked is that one time we watched the film with my then-girlfriend's girls, aged 4, 9 and 11, and throughout the 3½ hour black-and-white film spoken in Japanese, the girls too were watching intensely, asking questions and laughing at the comical spots. What can one say if someone can make a film in black-and-white and spoken in Japanese in 1954, that has that effect on Western people of all ages 55 years later? I think this film is quite different from the first thing that comes in mind when thinking of Japanese samurai films: it is actually an archetype of a Western action film with lots of action but also comedy and romance, and they say this film to a large extent defined the Western action film as directors started taking influence. But I think Seven Samurai is much more "loving" and concentrating on the personalities of the characters than its Western little brothers. There are no traditional bad guys and a fight against good and evil, but rather a philosophical theme of an ever-lasting battle in which some are winners and some are losers - which is resolved in the very end of the film.

Kurosawa is a master in portraying characters: there are 7 samurai working for a common cause voluntarily, and because of this the viewer needs to ask what makes them willing to risk their lives for this cause and to find out that every one of the samurai have different reasons. This is done without any underlining of the topic but simply displaying the characters, yet it is done knowingly and precisely and it results in the viewer loving all the samurai. I just love the character Kikuchiyo... such an anti-heroic bully but so important in the samurais' common effort, not just for his comical relief for the viewer.