Seven Samurai (1954)

 Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai"

Often looked at as the most remade, reworked, and referenced film in the history of cinema, Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" sets the standard for the large-scale action epic. It was the most expensive film ever made in Japan at the time and has since become the brightest beacon of post-war Japanese cinema. 

The story takes place in feudal Japan in 1586 in a farmers' village. After overhearing that a group of bandits say they will return to raid the village after the harvest, members of the town locate an aging samurai to help protect them. After recruiting six more samurai, they work together along with the villagers to plan their defenses from the bandits, as well as training the villagers to fight. Despite many sacrifices and losses, they successfully defend the village and its people.

What I love about "Seven Samurai" is also the reason why I love Kurosawa. Everything you need to know about the story is happening visually. The way Kurosawa directs his film is through the visual physical forms of his characters. In the beginning, he takes vastly different, unique, and starkly individual characters, all of them defined by how they move and behave in physical space, and as the film progresses, he morphs these unique individuals into a single collective. Kurosawa's use of physicality and visual space in his films mirrors the films of John Ford and American Westerns in general. Ironically, in turn, the Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s would emulate the work of Kurosawa. 

Not only are the visual elements of the film like the films of Ford and his Westerns, but its themes as well. A Ford Western usually consists of ideas concerning the individual and how the individual acts in contrast to the collective. However, because of the Western viewpoint of Ford and the American Western, the concept of the individual typically has an important place in the burgeoning collective society being formed. However, Ford did often venture into opposing territory, like with his 1939 masterpiece, "Stagecoach." Similarly to "Stagecoach," "Seven Samurai" only deals with the construction of a new order, a new nation, and a new establishment of a 'collective.' In the beginning of "Seven Samurai," there is chaos and lawlessness. As the samurai and village farmers come together, they begin to strategize, work together, gain trust, and ultimately achieve the goal of collective thinking. Through this collective thinking, they begin to sacrifice their individual selves for the greater collective good. Kurosawa shows this visually through the way he shoots them physically. In the beginning, their unique physical movements pointed to their sense of individuality. In the climax of the film, they are no longer individuals. Rather, they are a collective moving together. Kurosawa films this through the united way their bodies run in a 'herd.' Like a wave swaying across the frame, the individual bodies are all running parallel together with the same united goal. 

Through these themes, Kurosawa establishes a far more hopeful sentiment about the nature of post-war Japan. "Seven Samurai" was an ideal Kurosawa dreamt for a country ravaged by war, economic disparity, and post-war trauma. It represented a common pursuit for a better nation. Through the film, Kurosawa understood that, in order to deal with the horrible fallout of what was happening, a nation's people needed to come together, work together, and selflessly sacrifice the individual for the collective good.