Thursday, October 14, 2010

The Seven Samurai - Akira Kurosawa

Watched this classic on video with Ranjan. Awesome movie making in that back and white stuff. Amazes you how he made that movie so interesting, so gripping and so identifiable with a language and culture so far removed. Not even one moment of the movie disengages you. Terrific story telling.

It is perhaps the movie that inspired many more later. A village under threat from bandits decides to hire samurai to fight the bandits. But they have almost nothing to offer the samurai except food. However they go to the town, desperate as they are, and find an old samurai willing to help them. He hires five other samurai experienced in one art of warfare or another and another fighter who is not a samurai but has a heart of one. How the samurai fight the battle with the villagers against the better armed bandits is what the movie is about. Of course, it is not as simple as that because the story involves much more - love, sacrifice, vengeance, suppression, courage, compassion, skill and the human desire to overcome all odds in moments of distress.

Several one liners from the old samurai impressed me.
'It is when all is silent and peaceful that one must be most vigilant because that is when the enemy will strike'.

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