Seven Samurai
Seven Samurai
A veteran samurai who has fallen on hard times answers a village's request for protection from bandits. He gathers six other samurai to help him. They teach the townspeople how to defend themselves, and the townspeople supply the samurai with three small meals a day. The film culminates in a giant battle when 40 bandits attack the village.
Mike reviewedOctober 11, 2024
Seven Samurai is a captivating film, that has an interesting story, great and diverse characters and beautiful cinematography
"This is the nature of war. By protecting others, you save yourself. If you only think of yourself, you'll only destroy yourself."
This film is heavily focussed on the story and characters, luckily both these aspects were very interesting. This might actually be one of my favorite stories in a film. Usually in a film there are certain sequences that feel dragged or unnecessary, especially in a film this long, but Seven Samurai kept me captivated for the entire runtime. All characters had destinctive characteristics and their own strong personalities, which made every single one of the Samurai very interesting. It also created an emotional connection to, not only the characters, but more so their strong personalities. What was even more interesting, is the chemistry between the Samurai. The chemistry between them, which all have very different characteristics and personalities, resulted in some interesting and funny dialogue.
The cinematography was beautiful and visually strong, but never distracts from the story. The blocking of characters was one of the best I've seen and created some beautiful strong pyramid, diagonal and circular compositions. The film being black and white, combined with the use of static framing during most conversations, moved the focus to these compositions which enhanced them even further. The compositions, that got mostly created by the blocking of the characters, felt naturally within the scenes and still created a strong abstract visualization. This caused the scenes to not only look visually pleasing, but also kept me captivated in the story and characters at the same time.
The film was shot with a telephoto lens, which created telephoto compression that enlarges the background without enlarging the foreground. This provided the ability to shoot scenes in deep focus, which keeps the foreground, middleground and background in focus. This especially helped with the blocking of all the characters within a scene. Every shot had a destinctive look, where something would simultaneously happen in the fore- and background, which I really liked because it makes the scene come alive.
Some scenes were more dynamically staged, by focussing on moving characters. These scenes sometimes included a combination of dynamic and static blocking and framing, which has been done in other films, but felt really fluent in Seven Samurai. Keeping a character center framed creates a focus point, which holds the viewer's attention onto that character, every movement he makes and every word he says.
Read full review at Letterboxd: Mike_v_E