Why can the film Seven Samurai be rated as the first Japanese film?

Throughout the film Seven Samurai, the use of the lens and narrative rhythm are very smooth, with excellent and highly recognizable narrative rhythm and shooting style. It can be said that there are no unnecessary shots and plots, and the lines of this film are also very subtle and worth pondering. What is more commendable is some action scenes, in which the action design and lens editing are not sloppy at all, and they are still top-notch today.

However, these are not enough to make this work great. The real greatness of this work is that it captures the loneliness in the last stage of the Japanese samurai era. Anyone who knows about Japan knows that there is a booklet about Japan called Chrysanthemum and Knife, in which Chrysanthemum stands for the palace and Knife stands for the samurai. Both are the core of Japanese culture. The beauty of chrysanthemums, the advantages of knives and the black-and-white scenes reflect the contradictory character of this country's martial arts but etiquette.

Among the seven samurai, the last cold mountain of this "knife" was displayed. In Japan before the Meiji Restoration, samurai had a very high social class and were nobles with knives. In the era of the "Seven Samurai", the samurai were poor, but even if they could not eat, the samurai in the film still refused the food of the peasants, because they were still the upper class and the peasants' status was the lowest.

The story of The Seven Samurai is very simple. Weak villagers were ransacked by mountain thieves, so they hired warriors to help fight mountain thieves. The seven samurai they invited led these farmers to practice hard day and night, withstood the wave after wave of attacks by mountain thieves, and finally won a cruel victory at the expense of killing four samurai.

The seven samurai in the film came together because of various coincidences after thousands of choices. They have different personalities and abilities. In the process of protecting the village, they show the samurai's spirit of leadership, sacrifice, wisdom and strength to the fullest, and I think the most brilliant of these seven roles is the giant Chiyo played by Mr. Mifune Junlang.

The role of Chiyo embodies the epitome of that era. He is a man eager to get rid of the humble status of farmers, so he became a fake warrior and boasted to the villagers with other people's genealogy. He is brave and fearless, but he doesn't know martial arts and is not afraid of sacrifice, but he is too aggressive. His behavior and integrity can be called a samurai, but because he has no background, he will never be a samurai.

The most contradictory thing about this character is that he longs to be a samurai, but he hates samurai at heart. He sympathized with the peasants and was once a peasant, but he also said that the peasants were "the most cunning people" and were "stingy, cunning, cowardly, mentally retarded and murderers." It can be said that the contradiction of Kikuchiyang was also the contradiction of Japan at that time, and Kurosawa expressed it through Kikuchiyang's mouth.

At the end of the film, the Seven Samurai killed four people and defended the village. Seemingly successful, in fact, they completely failed. From beginning to end, farmers doubted them, feared them and used them. After the village was safe, the villagers celebrated themselves, and no one mourned for the dead warrior. The Seven Samurai won, but the Samurai lost, losing to the trend of the times.

This is the charm of the Seven Samurai, which allows you to see the last rivers and lakes in that country, just like the powerless mourning for the dead at the end of the film. "We waved goodbye, and my horse screamed again and again." A movie that lasted for more than three hours was like an impassioned war song, but it ended with a sigh.