7 Samurai

This weekend wasn't very cinematographic rewarding till today - I saw Sellers in The Pink Panther and wasn't very impressed, which saddened me. Also, I went to Julie and Julia and although Meryl Streep is always greatly entertaining, I thought the movie was overall weak. But I finally reached Mr K and when my friend, the connoisseur, arrived after my second glass of champagne (pre-celebrating my soccer team's victory - go Botafogo!), I was very excited about the prospect of watching my first Kurosawa movie, but doubtful I would be awake for the whole ride. Surprisingly enough, I was very mistaken.

What's it about? Medieval Japan - a group of unemployed Samurai accept the job of protecting a helpless village from bandits and are payed with rice.

My impressions on the movie: It's long: 207 minutes of black-and-white can be something to the eye. The movie has fewer action scenes than I would have expected after all those Kill Bills - and Kurosawa takes his time building his plot. I'm told that this is one of the first movies to have the recruiting-of-heroes-into-team-to-accomplish-a-specific-goal plot. The first DVD was over before I even realized that almost 2 hours had transpired. The characters are very human and are portrayed in the gentlest way. Kurosawa tells you a samurai story, but it's really about their humanity, with great warmth and humor. Be prepared to fall in love with the 7 imperfect heroes and some of the amusing villagers. The action scenes are nice and I was told that it is actually a breakthrough in Hollywood and is considered a textbook on how to make violent scenes. My eyes aren't that experienced and the blood looked very gray and indistinguishable. Meaning: it wasn't that violent although it was extremely well-done (I wasn't bored for a minute, even when the villagers kept running back and forth, "attacking" very passively the bandits).

Best moments: The first samurai, shaving his head in the very beginning to save a child; the whole of Kikuchiyo character, a very amusing anti-hero; the great battle scene in the end it's the perfect climax. Also: pay close attention to Kyuzo, the skilled Samurai who declined the offer at first. His acting is top-notch - I just loved him!

I rented this movie purely as part of my cinematographic education but I would recommend it to anyone with a minimum of cinema-appreciation and 3 hours to spare. There are "shorter versions" available, but go with the long one - I wouldn't leave anything out.

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