I have admired Kurosawa Akira's movies for a long time, and this "Seven Samurai" is one of them. I happened to be reading some books about movies recently, and try to briefly describe this movie.
In fact, I knew very little about Akira Kurosawa before. I only knew that he was a very famous director in Japan. I wanted to watch his "Rashomon" many years ago, but after all, I couldn't calm down and didn't watch it anymore. Until this time, after watching his two films "Seven Samurai" and "Ran" in two days, I suddenly realized that Akira Kurosawa is the master of the masters. After a little understanding, he has also influenced many younger directors, like Chinese people. The very familiar teacher Zhang Yimou is a loyal fan of Akira Kurosawa.
The film "Seven Samurai" tells the story of a village in Japan's Warring States period, when the peasants in a village were overwhelmed by the intrusion of bandits, hired samurai to guard their homeland and finally won the story. Although I seem to sum up this 200-minute film in one sentence, it is not. Director Akira Kurosawa is brilliant in making the story of the village head fight into an epic war film (this is the same as the epic war film in China now. The war movie was made into a village head fight, on the contrary).
Although the movie is very long, after watching it, it will make people feel that it is not redundant at all, and even a little unfinished. I think this is due to the director's superb scene scheduling ability and the core ideas shown by the profound plot. As we know, black and white movies generally have very high requirements on light, shadow and composition, and need strong contrast to highlight key information. In Akira Kurosawa, every frame of the picture can be taken out as a textbook to explain, which makes me This movie is a bit exhausting.
I picked a few scenes at the end. In the first scene, it was pouring rain, Katsushiro kneeling on the ground sadly because of the loss of his teammates, the samurai leader and his buddies held their samurai swords on the ground, and the villagers in the back squatted in rows, thatched grass. The room was processed into deep black, and the light was called from the left. Katsushiro's clothes should have been white, but here we used light and shadow to process a large area of dark color, and there was a very obvious contrast between the foreground and the background. The proportions of the composition occupied by the characters are also just right. The content of this picture is that the samurai leading the villagers just wiped out the bandits, but the samurai also hanged four, and the picture is filled with a sad atmosphere. Then the screen turned, a medium shot, zoomed out slowly, and then close-up, all showing the joy and excitement of the villagers after the victory, and then switched to the shot of the samurai, the remaining three samurai silently walked towards the towering samurai tombs, Leaving a bleak back, at this time Katsushiro's beloved girl appeared among the three of them, and walked over silently. Following Katsushiro's eyes, it was another long-range shot with a close-up, with a unique Japanese-style flute. The music, the villagers seemed to be completely immersed in great joy, which formed a strong contrast with the lonely samurai. In the end, Kanbei Shimada said meaningfully, "We seem to have lost again, and it was the farmers who won."
Of course, there are many places in the film that are handled very cleverly. Take the battle scene as an example. The battle of dozens of people is exciting to watch, the cavalry gallops quickly and the dust is rolled up, the long guns of the villagers go hand in hand, and The high-spirited slogan and the calm and calm command, the strategic competition of the two sides, the battle of wits and courage, have all the factors that a large-scale war should have. It can be said that although the sparrow is small and complete, it makes people addicted, what is a master-level scene scheduling , that's it.
Finally, let’s talk about the core idea shown in this movie. This is also what the movie should show to the audience. After all, a lot of technical things, if there is no good core as a support, will become empty dazzling skills. A good movie is one that hits the heart of the audience and hits our soul. "Seven Samurai" can actually see the essence of the whole film from the pictures I listed above, which is to criticize a series of dark sides of human nature such as selfishness, shortsightedness, ignorance, and cowardice of the peasant class in the Warring States Period of Japan. The excellent qualities of class selflessness, foresight, intelligence, and fearlessness form a very strong contrast. Coupled with the director's very delicate portrayal of the characters, it is easy to resonate with people. There is a kind of hatred for those people in Lu Xun's pen. The feeling of not being steel. The failed love between Katsushiro and Shino is actually a true portrayal of the insurmountable gap between the Japanese feudal classes.
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