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Seven Samurai and Kurosawa

I was looking through SkyPilot's list "I wanted to like it, but..." and discovered Seven Samurai and sent him a message asking him essentially if he really didn't like it.  Here was a portion of his response.

SkyPilot:

About Seven Samurai--I find it very boring. I don't understand the ultra-slow pacing, and I don't like the characters. It brings me no pleasure to watch any of them.

I plan on giving the movie another chance. I watched this a year ago or more, and maybe if I saw it again I'd like trying to "get into the heads" of the Samurai. But I have watched other Kurosawa movies since, and have been bored by all of them (Throne of Blood, Rashomon, Ikiru, The Hidden Fortress) except the two that inspired Leone (Yojimbo and Sanjuro).
What I liked about those is that they felt like Leone's westerns, or perhaps more appropriately, some of my favorite westerns flow like Kurosawa films.

What do you like about Seven Samurai and/or Kurosawa in general? Please tell me because I'm very interested to know. Feel free to quote this discussion in a blog if you'd like to answer publicly for all of Spout's benefit.

Well I loved Seven Samurai the first time I saw it, but then I saw it again in the big screen theater in the DeVos Communication Building for a class at Calvin at which point I felt it was a nearly perfect film (same thing happened for The Seventh Seal as well, though even more so [maybe I should see the movie Seven in there too]).  I'm not sure if we talked or read a lot of anything to go along with it.  I'm not sure why I appreciated it more.  I haven't seen it again since then.  It was just like any epic film that is among the best, it seemed to capture all aspects of life and bring them together.  Humor, pathos, action, virtues, vices, beginnings, endings, cycles of life.  The compositions, pacing, characters all seemd ideal.  I wish I could talk about it more specifically.  Maybe someone else can.

Rahomon is actually my favorite Kurosawa film.  I'm not sure how you can't break into tears during the ending.  Watching that one with the commentary on really helped me to understand more of what the different retellings of the story might have meant to the Japenese within the world of acting, filmmaking, and storytelling.  I could then relate it a lot more to something universal.

Kurosawa seems to be able to tap into the heart of powerful and universal stories.  It seems evident from the fact that he was so infauated with Shakespeare who is of course also cited as really understanding what is most essential and powerful in universal narrations.  The fact that Kurosawas films are also so often remade or borrowed from seems more evidence.  Explaining Kurosawa is like explaining Shakespeare.  It seems so basic and direct that it's almost too hard to explain, yet so complex at the same time.

I'm not sure if I've actually said anything here, but maybe we can get some discussion going.

Re: Seven Samurai and Kurosawa

Re: Seven Samurai and Kurosawa

I have another Kurosawa movie on my Netflix Queue coming up.  It looks really good because it is several short stories - here is a little bit of what it says about Akira Kurosawa's Dreams:

Re: Seven Samurai and Kurosawa

Re: Seven Samurai and Kurosawa