Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samu­rai is awe­some and per­fect, and this most recent view­ing has affirmed its place among this Dork Reporter’s all-time favorites. It’s a big movie, by which I mean it makes the best use of its gen­er­ous run­ning time with just the right amount of every­thing: romance, com­edy, drama, sus­pense, and action. Nearly half the film is taken up by a mas­sive, expertly chore­o­graphed bat­tle rival­ing any­thing put to film by famous West­ern direc­tors of vio­lent spec­ta­cle like Michael Mann or Steven Spiel­berg. Long as it is, it’s about 15 min­utes shorter than Gone With the Wind but twice as epic, twice as sub­stan­tial, twice as… well, twice as good.

It is, in some ways, a sim­ple tale broadly told. A rice farm­ing vil­lage in 16^th cen­tury Japan is under con­stant siege by a band of par­a­sitic ban­dits that abduct its young women and reg­u­larly steal most of its annual yield. With no gov­ern­ment or mil­i­tary to pro­tect them, the vil­lagers pool their mea­ger resources to hire seven ronin (mas­ter­less samu­rai reduced to sur­viv­ing hand-to-mouth as mer­ce­nar­ies) to fight on their behalf. The arche­typal char­ac­ters seem sim­plis­tic on the sur­face: vil­lains to boo and heroes to cheer. In case the viewer have any doubt as to who the bad guy is, the chief ban­dit wears a black eye­patch, for cry­ing out loud! Kam­bei (Takashi Shimura), the supremely capa­ble and wise leader of the samu­rai, essen­tially lays down a uni­ver­sal def­i­n­i­tion of “hero” with his recruit­ment call: “There’s a tough bat­tle ahead, lead­ing to nei­ther money nor rank. Will you join us?”

You messed with the wrong ronin

And yet, many sub­tleties grad­u­ally unfold. Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune) is one of the great plea­sures of the movie, but also one of its great­est mys­ter­ies. He’s clown­ish and child­ishly impul­sive, yet pas­sion­ately moral. He’s a com­moner mas­querad­ing as a samu­rai, his only cer­ti­fi­ca­tion being his ridicu­lously long sword (pre­sum­ably the lib­er­ated for­mer pos­ses­sion of a very tall samu­rai). Kam­bei, whom in another life could have been a good shrink, cor­rectly deduces Kikuchiyo’s moti­va­tions for hav­ing attached him­self to the ven­ture; he him­self is a peas­ant farmer with pre­ten­sions for more. He directly iden­ti­fies with the farm­ers’ plight, yet his deep-seated class inse­cu­ri­ties fuel his a love-hate rela­tion­ship with them. As an essay by Ken­neth Turan in the Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion edi­tion book­let points out, medieval Japan was a fiercely delin­eated caste soci­ety, and the fact that a for­mer farmer might pre­sume to call him­self a samu­rai is a huge trans­gres­sion. For a very dif­fer­ent, more sub­dued dra­matic per­for­mance by Mifune, see Kurosawa’s Stray Dog.

As we learn more about Kikuchiyo, we like­wise slowly get a more and more com­plex por­trait of the vil­lagers. They are no doubt the vic­tims of a seri­ous crime. Yet they whine all the way and mythol­o­gize them­selves as help­less, saintly, vic­tim­ized salt of the earth that must resort to hir­ing dis­graced samu­rai to pro­tect them. But they har­bor a dark secret; they have robbed many fallen samu­rai of their armor and weapons over the years Their ver­i­ta­ble armory of pil­fered gear of war is use­less to them, and yet they shame­fully hide it from the samu­rai pro­tect­ing them (even though it would bol­ster their com­ing war). The seven samu­rai are deeply offended, and yet nev­er­the­less do the right thing and defend the vil­lage. But the gulf between the two classes, samu­rai and farmer, is reaffirmed.

He’s a wild and crazy samurai

Seven Samu­rai is in the com­pany of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Cit­i­zen Kane, and Ver­tigo, a spe­cial class of film so famously influ­en­tial that even first-time view­ers may very well feel they’ve seen it before. Just to name a few of Seven Samurai’s first-generation off­spring: The Mag­nif­i­cent Seven is an unapolo­getic trans­po­si­tion of the orig­i­nal from feu­dal Japan to the Amer­i­can West. The Dirty Dozen and Ocean’s Eleven both bor­row the trope of recruit­ing a gang of mis­fits one-by-one, whom in con­cert become capa­ble of strengths impos­si­ble as indi­vid­u­als. Another American-produced remake is sched­uled for release in 2009, this time set in modern-day Thailand.

The 2006 Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion edi­tion is a required library item, not one to merely rent. A mag­nif­i­cent restora­tion of the film itself is accom­pa­nied by a beau­ti­fully designed sleeve and book­let. A sur­pris­ing amount of dam­age remains in the long bat­tle sequence in the sec­ond half of the film, but Criterion’s rep­u­ta­tion for qual­ity ensures that these are almost cer­tainly the best avail­able mate­ri­als. Per­haps these reels were more fre­quently sub­jected to tor­ture over the years by scholars?

Why you need to read the booklet:

• Ken­neth Turan on the full year of pro­duc­tion it took to make the film, mir­ror­ing the time that passes in the movie. On a prac­ti­cal level, the extended pro­duc­tion allows for greater real­ism like Kambei’s hair real­is­ti­cally grow­ing back after shav­ing his head in the begin­ning (the top­knot is a prized sym­bol of the samu­rai; not just a fash­ion but a require­ment of their caste). But also on a the­matic level, one year = the farm­ing cycle of life: plant­ing through harvest.
• Peter Cowie on the mutual admi­ra­tion soci­ety between Kuro­sawa (a fan of the Hol­ly­wood West­ern) and John Ford.
• Philip Kemp on 16^th Cen­tury Japan. The feu­dal soci­ety had lit­tle dis­tinc­tion between ronin and bandits.
• Peggy Chiao on Kurosawa’s influ­ences. Kuro­sawa was a Marx­ist in his 20s, but later mel­lowed. His older brother turned him on to Dos­toyevsky, but com­mit­ted suicide.
• Alain Sil­ver on Kurosawa’s stag­ing and composition.
• Stu­art Gal­braith IV on the his­tor­i­cal con­text of the con­tem­po­rary Japan­ese cin­ema, which was flour­ish­ing at the time.
• Appre­ci­a­tions by direc­tors Sid­ney Lumet and Arthur Penn.
• Toshiro Mifune’s quite funny and enter­tain­ing rem­i­nis­cences. Mifune claims he devised his char­ac­ter, as noth­ing had been writ­ten yet when he was cast.

Sup­ple­men­tal fea­tures on the bonus discs:

• “Akira Kuro­sawa: It is Won­der­ful to Cre­ate” — an almost exces­sively hagio­graphic biog­ra­phy, but with sev­eral amus­ing anec­dotes. Shoot­ing all year meant con­tin­u­ing through February’s freez­ing mud, while Mifune was almost naked. Kuro­sawa duti­fully stood in the mud with his cast and crew, and was lit­er­ally frostbitten.
• “Seven Samu­rai: Ori­gins & Influ­ences” — “The Story of the 47 Ronin” was a pop­u­lar pup­pet the­ater tale for hun­dreds of years, and was adapted into films sev­eral times a year in early Japan­ese cin­ema. One of those obser­va­tions that sounds obvi­ous in ret­ro­spect, but needs to be pointed out by some­body: Ronin (pro­nounced by some as “roh-ee-nin”) sto­ries are more pop­u­lar than samu­rai sto­ries because they are inher­ently more dra­mat­i­cally interesting.
• “My Life in Cin­ema: Akira Kuro­sawa” — a long inter­view by fel­low direc­tor Nag­isa Oshima.

Must read: the Cri­te­rion Con­trap­tion review by Matthew Dessem

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.