Seven Samurai

[deralte]

Just rewatched Kurasawa's Seven Samurai for the first time in awhile. I had forgotten how much I adored the film. Forgive me while I wax eloquent.

It has such a fantastic mix of poignant drama(Kikuchiyoi's passionate speech on farmers and samurai for example) and humour. I adore Toshiro Mifune, even when he's playing a drunken fool. The characterizations are excellent all around with everyone recieving a bit of attention and good development, all in a small amount of space despite the length of the movie. I loved the obvious research into history as well.

My only complaint was criterion collection's horrible subtitling job. I felt like I was watching an illegal chinese copy instead of a quality translation. Their grammar was sorely lacking and they missed out translating whole words and phrases (not too confusing when you're a diehard anime fan, but it must annoy others). I was amused to hear one of the samurai use 'de gozaru yo' at one point though. It's a bit sad about the cinematography on the movie as well. The camera angles and shots are very modern for a movie made in the fifties but the film quality itself doesn't stand up to the scrutiny.

I need to watch some of my other Akira Kurosawa films more often. Maybe Yojimbo next...

Comments

[sylk.livejournal.com]

We should watch that together sometime. I have a video version with nice subtitles tucked away somewhere.

Re:

[deralte.livejournal.com]

I have watched the video version once, but I thought the subtitles were the same on both...hmm. Have you seen any of Kurosawa's other films? Yojimbo is rightfully a masterpiece (and rates just as high, if not higher than Seven Samurai in my mind) and The Hidden Fortress is of course, what Lucas' based Star Wars upon.