This is probably the first one on the list that the general public won’t have seen or even heard of. So, I’ll recap: It’s a Japanese movie from 1954 about a small village that hires seven samurai to defend them from a band of forty bandits. Sounds simple and concise, right? No. It’s almost three and a half hours long. The story covers a lot of ground in that amount of time. And the director, the very-famous-in-Japan Akira Kurosawa knows exactly what to do with it. In the Asian tradition, we start at the very beginning, from the bandits deciding to raid the village when the barley ripens, whenever that is. This gives the villagers a time frame to plan how to defend themselves. We follow the town meetings, their decision and then follow those chosen on their journey to find and hire samurai, despite having no money with which to pay. Six are selected, with another one tagging along.
From here, Kurosawa begins to open up the story. Shortly after the samurai return to the village and begin preparations for its defense, we the audience discover that the villagers themselves are hardly innocent victims. Being dirt poor and unsupported in a world with almost no oversight, the village has long been susceptible to outside interference. In the past, they had either lured in, or been tormented by, wandering samurai and killed them, keeping their armor and weapons. I couldn’t really tell which, but the message was that the villagers are bandits of sorts in their own right. Another sub plot is that samurai, who are warrior class by virtue of birth and not virtue, are not always as noble as legends say. Many were greedy, mean or stupid. In fact, the tag along mentioned earlier, was not a samurai at all, but the son of a slain farmer who decided to teach himself how to fight and to carry a massive sword. He turns out to be one of the most intelligent of the seven, despite his lowly birth, and being crazy. Kurosawa handles these subplots amazingly well and weaves them and the main story together seamlessly in an astoundingly realistic world.
This is a great movie to watch and learn a little history while you’re at it. The only thing is that it’s in Japanese and you’ll have to read, which most Americans hate. But they wouldn’t get it anyway, so who cares? Smart people will like this movie, so watch it if you have half a day to kill.
