Daibutsu, Kamakura

Daibutsu, Kamakura
Daibutsu in Kamakura, June 2010. There were thousands of school kids visiting that day. It was still great fun.

Friday, January 16, 2009

The Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa



 

What a great movie.  Probably one of the greatest samurai movies of all time.  And one of the greatest movies created by the great director Akira Kurosawa, widely considered his greatest piece of work.  The characters, the story line, the filming. Amazing. One of my favorite films of all time. 

I first saw this film in 2006 and I recently watched it for a second time.  It takes place during the Warring States Period in Japan, around the late 1500s.  It is a story about a village of farmers who are terrorized by vicious bandits. The village hires a group of seven masterless samurai, ronin, to help them fight the violent criminal bandits.

The film is in Black and White and was the single largest undertaking by a Japanese filmmaker at the time. It had a major influence on the Western film, The Magnificent Seven, which was adapted from The Seven Samurai.

I have seen several samurai movies including some others by Kurosawa and this was by far the most impressive. I highly recommend it.

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:48 PM

    Totally agree. I'd go as far as to say it is one of the greatest Japanese films of all time even. Kurosawa at his absolute best. I'm rather fond of Yojimbo too..

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  2. Anonymous10:25 PM

    This movie is one of many that has been remade by Hollywood.

    http://tokyo5.wordpress.com/2008/12/13/japanese-movies/

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  3. Thank you both.

    I literally within the last 5 minutes just finished watching Kirosawa's film "Rashomon (it's 11:15 pm here in LA Friday night). Very impressive. I will write about it later.

    I liked it a lot.

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  4. Anonymous9:09 AM

    I'm a big fan of 7 Samurai and Kurosawa in general. I plan on watching Rashomon before I leave Japan.

    7 Samurai was the first film to have the "assembled heroes" story line.

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  5. Definitely see Rashomon.

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  6. i think i must have seen the seven samurai a dozen times at least. and it gets better with each viewing.

    other hollywood adaptions include bug's life and the three amigos.

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  7. Ha ha, the Three Amigos. That's interesting. They are the same premise.

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