Colin Droidmilk
Sr Member
Just watched this again for the first time in about 7 years. Even though I've seen it many times before, the sheer power of the thing to move the soul took me unawares all over again. I was getting wet-eyed during just the first exchange of glances between lead samurai Kambei and Mifune (while Kambei has his head shaved prior to dealing with the thief). And by the time we got to the scene where Kambei finally takes pity on the farmers and agrees to help, overcome as he is by their sacrifice of their only pitiful resource, their rice, my face was an embarrassing sopping mess. Why the tears? I dunno - a mixture of being destroyed by the overwhelming magnificence of every single aspect of the film in technical and artistic terms (in the way one might cry on encountering an oasis in a desert) and the sheer overpowering force of Kurosawa's humanity. Or something. I guess. Or maybe I'm just a big puff. Anyway, I thought, 'Bloodyhell how am I going to get through this? Am I gonna sit here weeping for the next 3 hours?' I managed to hold it in for most of the time, but there were many eruptions...really embarrassing.
In reading up on the movie I was intrigued to see that during script development Samurai warriors had presented Kurosawa with the same problems that Jedi warriors later presented to George Lucas in his search for a SW story. Namely, how to avoid the boredom of a row of dedicated, slightly Zen-headed warriors. Thus was born Mifune's character. Kurosawa realised he had to have an off-the-wall, fun, flaky kind of Samurai to leaven the brew. Lucas found a successful solution too: Han Solo. The word 'prequels' will make no appearance in this post other than in this sentence.
So yeah... and when the film ended, me and the GF just sat there watching the dvd menu for about 20 minutes, just unable to let go, just watching that loop of slowed down shots from the final battle roll past over and over again...
In reading up on the movie I was intrigued to see that during script development Samurai warriors had presented Kurosawa with the same problems that Jedi warriors later presented to George Lucas in his search for a SW story. Namely, how to avoid the boredom of a row of dedicated, slightly Zen-headed warriors. Thus was born Mifune's character. Kurosawa realised he had to have an off-the-wall, fun, flaky kind of Samurai to leaven the brew. Lucas found a successful solution too: Han Solo. The word 'prequels' will make no appearance in this post other than in this sentence.
So yeah... and when the film ended, me and the GF just sat there watching the dvd menu for about 20 minutes, just unable to let go, just watching that loop of slowed down shots from the final battle roll past over and over again...