Chapter 4 "We Fail Again, the Farmers Win": Seven Samurai, 1957

"We Fail Again, the Farmers Win": Seven Samurai, 1957 1. "Seven Samurai" is an old work numbered No. 2 in the standard company. It was re-launched not long ago, which once again proved the company's ability in film restoration and digital conversion, the authority of the collected tidbits and comments, and the excellent cover design. Master DVD works have become "the most meaningful film literature for contemporary filmmakers and movie fans." The new version of "Seven Samurai" is a three-disc set. In addition to retaining the commentary track of Japanese film expert Michael Jack in the original version, it also invited Five scholars who study Akira Kurosawa have recorded a new commentary track, each commenting for about 40 minutes, namely Steven Prince, David Desaier and Tony Raines, Donald Rich and Joan Mirren.At the same time, the extras include "Creation is Wonderful" explaining the behind-the-scenes situation of the film script, music, setting, and how the characters of the Seven Samurai were created; in addition, there are 2 hours of dialogues between Nagisa Oshima and Akira Kurosawa, and a 50-minute Documentary "The Origin and Influence of Samurai Films".The standard edition of this set is invaluable both for research and for enjoying the film.

In fact, it is very difficult to write the classic "Seven Samurai" again.According to reviewer Steven Prince, any four minutes on the film of "Seven Samurai" can be found to be Kurosawa's unprecedented masterpiece of condensation of various film techniques.In other words, every shot and every scene of it is worthy of careful comment.What's more, this film involves the background of Japan's Sengoku period, the power of Bushido, its status and influence in film history, Akira Kurosawa's creative spirit and humanitarianism, as well as controversy on many themes.This time, I re-watched the movie based on reviews and behind-the-scenes. I feel that it is more than enough to write a 100,000-word monograph on "Seven Samurai" (I think there are probably already). Two or three thousand-word articles can only be an experience 's notes.But it needs to be explained that I personally don't have much emotional love for this film. This may be related to Akira Kurosawa's own interpretation of Bushido in this film, although there are fierce battle scenes and exaggerated scenes. The performance style, but generally speaking, is very restrained, showing a kind of Zen state; and maybe I am personally uncomfortable with the portrayal of farmers in the film.

2. There are two backgrounds for the birth of "Seven Samurai". One is the background of the film during the Warring States Period in Japan. Western critics said that this film takes us back to the "fascinating and turbulent 16th century"; ended, and the Japanese Police Reserve was officially renamed the Self-Defense Forces, and continued to develop into a regular army.In the first background, Akira Kurosawa is particularly pursuing a sense of epic. The appearance of the silhouette of a bandit riding a horse in the opening scene accurately expresses this style.One view is that the film's views on farmers and the times are not new, and its achievement lies in its vivid presentation of the past, which is also the purpose of Akira Kurosawa's pursuit of realistic samurai films.The second background makes this film full of controversy. At the beginning of the film's release, the famous film critic Tadao Sato expressed his disgust for it, thinking that it is a film that promotes the necessity of the existence of the Self-Defense Forces.I don't think this kind of insinuation theory is accurate. If the samurai are compared to the Self-Defense Forces, it also emphasizes the inevitability of their failure.

In the interview with screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto, we learned that Akira Kurosawa’s original purpose of shooting this film was to innovate the genre of samurai films. He first conceived a short story of “A Day of the Samurai”, ending with a samurai committing seppuku ( It can be seen that the death, failure, and disappearance of the samurai have always been the main theme of Kurosawa's creation of this film); then he felt the need to shoot a samurai film with five different battle scenes, and later gave up because the action climax was too dense; finally, in the investigation The main story line of this film was triggered by discovering the historical details that farmers in the Warring States Period hired warriors to guard the village.Prior to this, although Akira Kurosawa was in the film and "Tap Tail Tiger" had the image of a samurai, it was not a "sword and halberd movie"; and although there have been samurai movies in Japanese movies, the battle scenes are mostly close to Kabuki performances. "Seven Samurai" became the prototype of almost all samurai films in the future.In this film, Akira Kurosawa highlights the influence of John Ford and Western films, while in turn affecting Hollywood and even the entire world film. Six years after the release of "Seven Samurai", Hollywood director John Sturges remade "Seven Heroes", and since then, everyone from Spielberg to Zhang Yimou has claimed to be greatly influenced by Akira Kurosawa (this is also obvious to all. of).As for Chinese-language films, apart from Tsui Hark's 2005 work "Seven Swords" and "Seven Samurai" which are quite similar in realistic style, Wong Kar-wai's work "Evil and West Poison" has a humorous story about farmers asking killers to fight against horse thieves. And Wang Tong's work "Riding the Horse into the Forest" describes the "tragic experience" of being killed by farmers and the government when the robbers ransacked the village. inspiration.

3. In "Seven Samurai", there are three forces, bandits, warriors, and farmers.Although the bandits are villains, they are only depicted as a group in general. In the film, it is the warriors and farmers who really promote the development of the drama.One of the strengths of this film is the portrayal of the characters.In general, the samurai is perfect under the lens of Akira Kurosawa. In our experience, "high quality" is a very bad way of describing, but in Akira Kurosawa, every samurai has a distinctive personality trait, Let us never forget.The reason is that Akira Kurosawa wrote about the samurai as a "person", and they have independent personality charm.Jiu Zang's calm and sublime, Katsushiro's youthful enthusiasm, Shichiroji's peace, Heihachi's cheerfulness, and Gorobei's orderly behavior are all unforgettable.The leader, Kanbingwei, represents Akira Kurosawa's highest ideal for the samurai class.This has been shown in the opening story of Kan Bingwei who shaves his hair to save people: In order to save innocent children who have never met before, he is willing to give up the hair that marks his personal identity and dignity; he has a mature and confident charm, but he always emphasizes himself. I have fought countless times in my life, but I have lost all battles - I just survived.Throughout the battle, he displayed compassion, courage, and wisdom, possessed both commanding skills and high martial arts skills, and was undoubtedly a perfect man.

As for the peasant class, Akira Kurosawa only emphasized the typical images of the elderly elders, the vigorous young Liji, the selfish Wanzao, and the imbecile Heping. Most of the time they only appear as a collective image, that is, Sato Tadashi's so-called "insect"-like image.To sum up, the peasants in this film embody: despicableness, selfishness, cowardice, ignorance, laxity, and all other bad qualities.Western commentators believe that the peasants here represent the humbleness and lowliness, pain and patience of the entire human being, because in real history, the peasants at that time were not so incompetent, and they often obtained the power of self-government by launching riots, so this is not realistic. .Eastern commentators also believe that the description of farmers as insects (either crouching on the ground in a group, or running away crying and screaming) is a portrayal of "the world is not benevolent, and everything is a humble dog".Although these two statements have some truth, I still think that the film's description of farmers represents Kurosawa's subjective views-although it is "sorrowful for his misfortune, angry for his indisputable", it basically reveals that he has never I have conducted in-depth investigations and paid attention to farmers, and have not treated them as characters with independent personalities.Kikuchiyo, played by Toshiro Mifune, is a comedy character connecting the two classes of samurai and peasants, and is also the spokesperson of Akira Kurosawa's thoughts on peasants.The role of this fake samurai is almost tailor-made for Toshiro Mifune. At first you may be a little uncomfortable with his impromptu exaggeration, but after a while you will be impressed by his innocence. This is the only one of the seven samurai who completely There is no prototype image.

4. The ending of "Seven Samurai" also fits the greatness of the film as a whole.After the victory, the farmers happily danced and transplanted rice seedlings. The scene in this farmland was very beautiful and vivid (it can be watched repeatedly).When showing the happiness of the peasants ("returning to a self-centered life"), the camera is always looking down.And the three surviving samurai were isolated on the edge.There is no gesture of gratitude from the farmers.Tadao Sato complained that in this scene, Akira Kurosawa showed that farmers only have the ability to produce and reproduce, but not spirit-only samurai have spirit.Kurosawa only shows a low-camera shot of Manzo's daughter, who has had sex with a young samurai, and she sings a song while planting rice seedlings with her head down. A final word to the peasant class".Several commenters have pointed out that "Seven Samurai" is about "how a samurai is made" (not about appearance and behavior, but about spirit and attitude). The young Katsushiro did it through sex and violence; Kikuchiyo is through death.From this point of view, if we want to explain it to Akira Kurosawa, his last scene does not deliberately imply the ingratitude of the peasants, but emphasizes the loneliness and greatness of the samurai, as well as the inevitability of their demise—the existence of the samurai is Fighting for their employers, winning or losing, will lose their reason for being.In the last scene of the film, the living three samurai silently walk through the graves of the four dead comrades-in-arms and leave.The main theme of the samurai music sounds, drowning the singing of the peasants, and when it completely dominates the screen, the camera pans to a tall grave with a long sword.Only one meaningful sentence was left-Kan Bingwei said: We failed again, and the farmers won.

Even rewatching it today, some of the amazing shots of "Seven Samurai" are still confusing, I don't know how they were conceived, and the last melee in muddy water makes people feel immersive Feeling, like "uncontrolled history" (Joan Mirren).While there's plenty of behind-the-scenes footage, I still struggle to understand the intelligence, courage, patience, and on-set talent required to achieve this effect.When Donna Rich commented on this film, he said that "action is everything" in "Seven Samurai", like a "clinical film lesson", many passages return to the great temperament of the silent film era.It is the strong sense of rhythm of the film that makes this three-hour and twenty-seven-minute film look like an hour and a half, without any feeling of procrastination.In terms of narrative, Akira Kurosawa often only shows the audience the core parts, and allows the audience to organize the fragments they see by intercepting and extracting techniques, such as the incident of Liji's wife and Kikuchiyo's life experience.

5. Before the end of 2006, an autobiography of Akira Kurosawa was published.The title of the book is very strange, but it is easy to say. The story originated from a Japanese folk legend: It is said that in the deep mountains, there is a kind of ugly toad. When it sees its ugly face, the toad will spit out oil all over its body. This oil is said to be a very precious medicinal material.Akira Kurosawa described himself to the toad standing in front of the mirror, "Every time I look back on the past, I find myself so ugly, and I used to be so unbearable, so I get scared all over my body. The crystallization of this oil is this autobiography. ".The reason for citing this story is that I don’t love Akira Kurosawa in general, but all my impressions tell me that he is a great director who is humble and introspective.In the book review written by my friend Du Qingchun for this book, there is a summary of Akira Kurosawa, which is "the way of the sword", "the way of calligraphy", and "the way of humanity", which I think is very appropriate. "Kendo" refers to the concept of violence in the old Japanese culture, "eliminate all the negative cruelty of violence, and enjoy the pleasure, hatred and masculine beauty brought by violence", which is shown in "Seven Samurai" Especially prominent; "calligraphy" refers to Akira Kurosawa's desire for "beauty of form", which "partly comes from the presentation of a sense of movement, and partly from the dramatic conflict of color and shape", in the opening subtitles of the black and white film "Seven Samurai" , the sense of form is already very strong. He deliberately tilted the calligraphy of "sitting upright" in ordinary Japanese movies at that time to create a strong emotional and visual experience; "humanity" is the most prominent connotation of Kurosawa's works. Du said that "Akira Kurosawa's 'humanity' is simple on the one hand, the life of the common people is worthy of awe or the death of the common people is also worthy of awe, on the other hand it is also the influence of the general Western liberalism's conceptualized 'human nature'", In this regard, "Seven Samurai" is very complex and intriguing.

In this book, there are no "film interpretation" and "behind-the-scenes footage" that fans are keen on (the director's own), only Kurosawa's own life.As far as this book is written, there is a wise saying at the end of the book: There is no author's work that can better explain the author.So with regard to movies, sometimes it doesn’t matter what the director explains, the most important thing is what the audience sees from the work, and whether the interpretation is “accurate” is relative.