8/3/2023 0 Comments Seven samurai“People like the concept of honor they like to root for underdogs,” he adds, “and the tensions between the mercenaries and the villagers makes for good personal drama.” “Mercenaries are meant to be the ultimate cynics, sometimes changing sides in the middle of the fight if they get a better offer,” said Sayles, who wrote the screenplay for the 1980 film “Battle Beyond the Stars,” which sets the “Seven Samurai” story in outer space. It is not just a rethinking of the 1960 movie of the same name - which was a western remake of “Seven Samurai” and featured Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson saving a Mexican village from bandit leader Eli Wallach - but the latest example of the Kurosawa work’s influence. “It’s classic mythology, it’s the hero’s journey, and it’s about the best of us coming together for one cause, to do the right thing,” says Antoine Fuqua, director of the recently opened “The Magnificent Seven,” the latest screen version of the “Samurai” tale.įuqua’s film stars Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt as gunmen leading a gang of mercenaries - a multiracial group that includes a Mexican, Asian and Native American - against a rapacious mine owner (Peter Sarsgaard) terrorizing a Western town. And that’s why Kurosawa’s masterpiece continues to inspire filmmakers and other artists. Yet within that simple framework is a rich tale involving self-sacrifice, honor, male bonding and sympathy for the underdog. Following a personal breakdown in the late sixties, Kurosawa rebounded by expanding his dark brand of humanism into new stylistic territory, with films such as Kagemusha and Ran, visionary, color, epic ruminations on modern man and nature.The plot of director Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 classic, “Seven Samurai,” can be summed up in one sentence: Mercenaries are hired to protect a farming village from marauding bandits. Kurosawa would subsequently gain international fame with Rashomon, a breakthrough in nonlinear narrative and sumptuous visuals. The first serious phase of Kurosawa’s career came during the postwar era, with Drunken Angel and Stray Dog, gritty dramas about people on the margins of society that featured the first notable appearances by Toshiro Mifune, the director’s longtime leading man. His best-known films remain his samurai epics Seven Samurai and Yojimbo, but his intimate dramas, such as Ikiru and High and Low, are just as searing. PLUS: Essays by Kenneth Turan, Peter Cowie, Philip Kemp, Peggy Chiao, Alain Silver, Stuart Galbraith, Arthur Penn, and Sidney Lumet and an interview with Toshiro Mifune from 1993Īrguably the most celebrated Japanese filmmaker of all time, Akira Kurosawa had a career that spanned from the Second World War to the early nineties and that stands as a monument of artistic, entertainment, and personal achievement. New and improved English subtitle translation.Gallery of rare posters, behind-the scenes photos, and production stills.“Seven Samurai”: Origins and Influences, a documentary looking at the samurai traditions and films that helped shape Kurosawa's masterpiece.My Life in Cinema, a two-hour video conversation from 1993 between directors Akira Kurosawa and Nagisa Oshima.Fifty-minute documentary on the making of Seven Samurai, created as part of the Toho Masterworks series Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create.Two audio commentaries, one featuring film scholars David Desser, Joan Mellen, Stephen Prince, Tony Rayns, and Donald Richie, and the other Japanese film expert Michael Jeck.New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with the original uncompressed monaural soundtrack and an optional DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack.
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