Japanese cinematographic masterpiece is interesting to all audiences, regardless of tradition and age. The movie profitable Silver Lion at the Venice Movie Competition, in addition to its Academy Award nominations for Finest Artwork Route-Set Ornament and Finest Costume Design. “Seven Samurai” by Akira Kurosawa is a narrative about the heroism, sacrifice, and tragedy. One of the greatest, most solely influential films ever made.
In 1954 Akira Kurosawa directed “Seven Samurai,” an motion movie patterned after the Hollywood western however with a definite Japanese historic context: the cowboys from the American model are in Kurosawa’s movie sixteenth-century, honor-bound warriors.
A historic determine from a wonderful previous, the honorable samurai, stood in stark distinction to the common postwar Japanese citizen’s routine humiliations beneath American occupation after the warfare and his or her concessions to a rising Westernization in trendy Japanese tradition.
A bunch of villagers seeks mercenaries to guard a small farming village from assaults in opposition to the bandits, who return yearly to steal their crops.
Widespread sense tells the farmers that it is a idiot’s errand, as they don’t have anything however meals with which to pay the troopers, who despise the farmers as an inferior class and are usually not prone to really feel sympathy for them. Though, the farmers meet up with a really extraordinary ronin who’s true to the Bushido code and he assembles a crew of 5 different samurais plus the would-be warrior. Utilizing a technique deliberate by the seven samurais, the farmers defend the village efficiently.
One of the central symbols of the movie is a warrior Kikuchiyo, performed by Toshiro Mifune. Kikuchiyo was born as a farmer however decided to be a samurai; he was an toddler who additionally was rescued from the destruction of warfare. The “Seven Samurai,” in the spirit of the influences from the American occupation, helps Kikuciyo and mocks the feudal worldview proclaiming impossibility of reputable upward mobility. Right here, the director visually depicts a metaphoric dimension by way of burning waterwheel. The burning wheel displays a contemporary imaginative and prescient of a full circle of Sengoku warfare through which farmer’s son, can mature right into a warrior who saves one other youngster as he was as soon as saved.
One other essential image is rice. The warfare complicates rising rice or sustaining of any harvest, rice turns into a central medium of trade throughout the war-torn Sengoku interval, because it was once more in publish World Struggle II Japan when hundreds died of hunger in the cities. Folks with out cash would commerce their rice ration playing cards as a medium of trade. Kurosawa tapped into the current reminiscences of the Japanese by his use of rice in the film. However he additionally concerned the mythic function of rice as a sacred grain that has been half of conventional Japanese tradition. So, when Kambei receives a bowl of rice from the farmers, and Kurosawa frames a close-up of his hand holding the providing, the director makes a strong assertion about the samurai’s sense of honor.
All movie is about the that means of warfare. To the fighter, it isn’t solely their life, but additionally a sort of pastime and means of proving their honor. To the villagers, it means torment and oppression. The samurai could also be disgusted by the breach of the warrior’s code when the villagers kill a supine prisoner, however the rage displayed by the farmers in the direction of one of their tormentors exhibits how distanced the troopers could be from the realities of warfare. The echoes could be felt all the solution to one of Kurosawa’s movies – “Rhapsody in August,” about the legacy of Nagasaki. The “Seven Samurai” from any and all of its shallow imitations.
References:
- By. “Seven Samurai Abstract.” GradeSaver: Getting You the Grade, .
- “Seven Samurai.” Seven Samurai :: Essays Papers, .
- Shmoop Editorial Group. “Seven Samurai Plot Abstract.” Shmoop, Shmoop College, 11 Nov. 2008, .