the internet archives has a copy of the classic film The Magnificent Seven, for your watching pleasure.
the classic story of seven shady gunmen who are hired to protect a village of poor farmers. Yes there have been remakes, mostly inferior, but this one has the major stars, (Yul Brenner, Charles Bronson, etc.) good cinematography, and of course the music score that makes it a classic film.
the film could be summarized with the quote: there is a time to war and a time of peace. and by another quote: The meek will inherit the land.
As is explained to the surviving gunfighters by the wise old man (Fast forward to minute 4) it is the farmers who win.
Quick: watch it before it gets removed for being non politically correct or because the copyright cops find it is there.
The film is a remake of Kurosawa's classic film The Seven Samurai, which also can be found at internet archives.
I am no expert on film history, but Kurosawa's films have had a large influence on other films, from A Fistful of Dollars (Yojimbo) to Star wars (Hidden Fortress)
Cultural appropriation? Well, if so, that works both ways.
Because one of Kurosawa's best films is Ran: (LINK) (Ran means turmoil or chaos)...a retelling of King Lear, set in medieval Japan. A king decides to retire, and leave his kingdom to his three sons (in Lear, it is daughters). One son objects and is exiled. Then the sons end up exiling the king and warring with each other. Very bleak, and like Lear, the king and the good son all die in the end.
Sigh.
Unlike many of Kurosawa's earlier films, it is in color and again the cinematography is beautiful.
One commentator noted how that film inspired the battle scenes of Game of Thrones (I wouldn't know: GOT is too nihilistic for my taste).
Finally, no discussion of Kurosawa would be complete without mentioning his early film, Rashomon: Three witnesses to a crime, three stories. Which is true? Then the 4th witness comes forth with the answer.
unlike most crime dramas, the witnesses are not lying.
as Roger Ebert noted in his review:
The genius of "Rashomon" is that all of the flashbacks are both true and false. True, in that they present an accurate portrait of what each witness thinks happened. False, because as Kurosawa observes in his autobiography, "Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing."
The story is quite bleak, and can be viewed on many levels. I always view it from a feminist point of view: That the men indeed do not see the woman as a person but as an extension of their ego. Both men blame the woman for being a victim and despise her for what is essentially their own actions: and she reacts by taunting them into fighting by saying that they see only the doll: but the real woman would be worth fighting to the death to win. So essentially all the people are guilty of the Samurai's murder, including himself...
But the bleak story causes the young monk to become sad to the point of despair, but the dark view of humanity is relieved in the end when the poor wood cutter adopts the baby abandoned at the Temple, proving that indeed there are good people in the world.
yes, that sounds about right.
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