An Attempt at Identifying the Core of the Story
Seven Samurai is a richly textured film with a complex set of interwoven stories that are not easy to summarize. But if I had to briefly characterize this movie, I would say it's about the interaction between two social classes—the samurai and the peasant farmers—who don't like each other but are thrown together during a time of unrest. In spite of the film's title, Seven Samurai is just as much about the villagers, represented by Rikichi, Yohei, Manzo, and Shino, as it is about the samurai. And the most important character is not Kambei, the samurai leader, but Kikuchiyo, the peasant who becomes a samurai by pluck and luck instead of by heredity.
On the Style of the Acting
I found the highly stylized acting in Seven Samurai very strange at first, and it took me some time to become sufficiently accustomed to it to realize that it fits the story quite well. It's interesting to compare the stylized acting in Seven Samurai with the more realistic acting in Tokyo Story, a great Japanese film released a year earlier than Seven Samurai. But Tokyo Story is a realistic story set in the 1950s while Seven Samurai is the recounting of a legend dating from the 1500s, and I believe the exaggerated acting style in Seven Samurai serves as an effective way of indicating to us the kind of tale we are watching. The characters in Seven Samurai are legendary figures rather than real people, and this justifies turning poor Yohei into a near-caricature and the unabashedly mannered way that Toshiro Mifune plays Kikuchiyo, an ambitious peasant who overcompensates for his humble origins.
Visual Style
The complexity of the story in Seven Samurai is matched by the movie's visual style. Kurosawa comes up with an astonishing number of carefully composed shots, yet the camera rarely lingers as he uses deep focus to seamlessly transition from one shot to the next, sometimes briefly capturing three layers of movement in a single frame. And I'll always remember some of the images in the film, such as the way the village looks from the top of the hill, the entwined bodies of Katsushiro and Shino with light shining on them through slats in a barn, and the three surviving samurai looking up at the four graves marked with the swords of the slain warriors.
Hollywood's Retelling of the Story
In 1960 Hollywood released a western based on Seven Samurai titled The Magnificent Seven, but the American adaptation is basically just a well-crafted entertainment while Kurosawa's film sheds light on the human condition. But it's easy to sit down and enjoy the accessible The Magnificent Seven the very first time you see it, while I expect most first-time viewers of Seven Samurai will probably have as much trouble getting into Kurosawa's masterpiece as I did. For me, however, watching Seven Samurai repeatedly and seeing new facets of the film each time is a deeply satisfying experience.
DVD Details
Below I have given the details for the Seven Samurai DVD.
Release Date: August 5, 1998
Number of Discs: 1
Feature Film Run Time: 3 Hours 27 Minutes
Widescreen (1.33:1), Black-and-White
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Japanese Monaural
English Subtitles
Audio Commentary by Japanese-Film Expert Michael Jeck
Theatrical Trailer