Seven Samurai, released in 1954 by the Toho Company of Japan, became popular for being one of the first jidaigeki (period drama) films to break away from the clichés of the genre’s past, and attempt to provide a more accurate historical account of the Edo period. Said to be one of the most influential films of all time, Seven Samurai’s story and aesthetic borrowed heavily from American Western’s in the early 20th Century, and in turn influenced western directors after Kurosawa’s success.
Early Japanese cinema, which is often pigeon-holed as samurai or ninja films, had more in common with the stories of classic westerns; lone heroes lending a hand to common folk for the upkeep of law and morality. These heroic tales often sprout from society’s need for a savior during difficult times, and as Japanese identity was heavily bruised after the end of the war, this need became evident in the surge of films featuring such tales. Highlighting Japan’s class system and the roles of individuals within, Seven Samurai’s story revolves around a group of master-less samurai called on to help villagers defend their homes and crops from ruthless bandits. It was released at the height of commercial success for both the production company and the genre itself.
Kurosawa attempted to re-invent jidaigeki to make the films more realistic both historically and artistically. In such films as Yojimbo he went to the extreme of using realistic sounds of swords cutting flesh, which emphasised the artificial nature of past period films. His scriptwriter and producer, recurring collaborators on the majority of his films, worked together with Kurosawa to research the era. His desire to recreate an accurate portrayal of a day in the life of a samurai led to the discovery of how few records were kept on such aspects. The story was instead expanded from the accounts of samurai helping villagers in exchange for food and shelter. After an abnormally long production and exorbitant budget (11 months and JPY$210 million - seven times higher than that of a typical production), Kurosawa’s film, much like The Hidden Fortress, was a huge financial risk that garnered him great praise but also criticism for its hyperrealism.
Although thoroughly researched by Kurosawa and his team of writers, it has been critiqued as being historically inaccurate. “The film creates a heightened sense of realism by meticulously showing all kinds of detail that are normally ignored in conventional jidaigeki films” (Yoshimoto, P. 243). He is also said to be less of a Japanese director but an American-Japanese director, whose influences are more than evident in not only his jidaigeki films but also his adaptations of Western authors/playwrights such as Shakespeare and Gorky. This has given critics the grounds to claim he lost nationalistic character and ideology whilst making films targeted at the Japanese population, and whether this is true or not, it cannot be argued that his films were accurate on a visual level.
The most vivid example of Kurosawa’s depiction of this era would be his meticulous attention to detail with the settings and costumes; he worked alongside many different teams of designers and consulted with historians to recreate the setting in which Seven Samurai takes place. To form the characters, Kurosawa compiled a band of fairly contrasting personalities in order to explore different forms of heroism and help engage the audience. They ranged from the “dutiful apprentice Katsushiro and the consummate swordsman Kyuzo to the ingenious and spiritually wise leader Kambei” (Goodwin, P. 165). Kurosawa pioneered the use of multi-camera filming, and his choice of utilising long close-ups is not only a strong story-telling device but also a space for the audience to truly understand and sympathise with the characters. Most memorable of Kurosawa’s stylistic touches are his slow-motion death sequences, which have been described as “a perpetual shock that stems from the misalignment of time within the montage” (Prince, P. 349), and which appear in a number of his films.
In the final scene of Seven Samurai we realise that by training the villagers to defend themselves, the samurai have essentially made themselves redundant, and in his closing line of the film, leader Kambei states: “Again we are defeated. The winners are those farmers. Not us…” This changes our perception of the story so that the villagers are the heroes, not the samurai, leaving the audience with a bittersweet realisation that we ourselves are capable of protecting one another, against all odds. These timeless tales coupled with Kurosawa’s humanism, original technical style and attention to detail have positioned him as one of the most influential filmmakers of all time, whose legacy is still evident in the films of today.
References:
M Yoshimoto, Kurosawa – Film Studies and Japanese Cinema, Duke University Press Books, Durham NC, 2000
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