Film on Friday: Films of the Year... 2019

Despite many things, last year was a good year for film.

That is, regardless of the preponderance of superhero and rebooted franchise films, there was still some unique and creative films being made.

Also, despite being films of 2019 I've only just seen them and due to festival and UK release dates some of them are counted as 2018 or 2020 films.

Anyway, it turns out that I was just in the mood for Horror/Comedy recently. Some of these are more of one than the other, but there's definitely both in the spirit there or thereabouts.

All these films are sequels in a manner of speaking though, in that I have enjoyed the film maker's previous efforts and was looking forward to their new offerings. Although the people behind the remake of Suspiria were new to me, the original film made by Dario Argento is one of my favourites. Indeed, seeing Goblin play the soundtrack live in accompaniment to the film at the Summerhall in 2018's Edinburgh Festival was one of the musical highlights of my existence!

Here then are four films that I think you should watch. They are in the order that I watched them and if pushed I'm not even sure which I would say is my favourite... they all have good points. 🧜‍♀️

Midsommar
Ari Aster (writer and director)
July 2019 (UK release)

Ari Aster's first film Hereditary belongs to a possibly new sub-genre of Horror,  'Domestic Horror', in that it makes family life seem horrific. It's far from a 'normal' family life it has to be said, but there are enough recognisable aspects in the day-to-day portrayals of familial conflict that reverberate within the viewer (this viewer at any rate). So, I was expecting a similarly believable representation of 'the banality of horror' in his new film Midsommar. As before the central character(s) are dealing with a traumatic grief, which is compounded by a difficult relationship with family/partner. Obviously parallels to 1973's The Wicker Man also abound, but despite touching on similar themes of 'Folk Horror' there are plenty of different ideas at play in this film, such that it never feels like a pastiche of Robin Hardy's film. Ari Aster has a certain style in depicting injury and violence that in its exactness and realism makes it seem more horrifying than anything that Saw or similar 'Torture Porn' films could depict. The images that he creates linger long in the memory.

Suspiria
Luca Guadagnino (director)
David Kajganich (writer)
November 2018 (UK release)

Dario Argento's 1977 classic is one of my favourite films (see above), but it is more a triumph of style than a particularly memorable story. Indeed, the original film succeeds despite it's lack of plot or character depth. I was curious therefore how any remake might approach this aesthetic masterpiece. Luca Guagagnino's response is to effectively invert many of the tropes of the original whilst staying with a lot of the central themes of Argento's work. With the writing of David Kajganich the characters and the setting itself (a divided Berlin before the Wall fell) are given a whole new lease of life, the internal politics of the witches are detailed from the first. There is no hokey 'Scooby-Doo' style investigation into whether there are witches in the dance school, we are pretty much told from the start what they are and what is happening. The wider world is more detailed as is the dance school itself, for example in a change from  the original, the main thrust of the action is to do with dancers dancing rather than as a spooky girl's school. The cinematography, provided by Uncle Boonmee's Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, is also worth mentioning in that they use the same sort of 35mm film stock that was used in the original, but they make it less of a technicolor nightmare and more of a moody and bleak winter of discontent. Remake? More like re-imagining. Superb on all fronts and topped by a magisterial Tilda Swinton(s).

The Lighthouse
Robert Eggers (director)
Robert & Max Eggers (writers)
January 2020 (UK release)

Another sophomore directorial effort that like Midsommar does not fall into the fêted 'difficult second album' problem. Indeed, although I thoroughly enjoyed The VVitch, Eggers' first film, that was only after a second viewing. On first viewing, in the cinema, I was not at all impressed, but this was mainly due to effusive over-praising by film critic Mark Kermode. However I did come to really like it and have watched the film several more times. This film I liked straight away and much as with the first film calling it 'Horror' doesn't really do it justice (indeed, none of these films are typical Horror films). Before I discovered that the inspiration behind the story was an Edgar Allen Poe story, I had described the film to a friend as 'Samuel Beckett does HP Lovecraft'. However, these are only a few names in what could be a myriad of potential influences at play in this film, as it seems the brothers Eggers are enjoying diving into the vast array of different nautical mythologies and folk stories of lighthouse keepers that they could find. As a dream-like depiction of losing sense of oneself, or in other words the struggle against going mad, this film does a remarkably unsettling job in achieving this. It's greatest achievement is the feeling of isolation and of being stuck with someone who might be an enemy, while living in personal and literal desolation is incredibly well portrayed. Both actors are incredible, as they would need to be, with only a handful of brief cameos representing other characters.

In Fabric
Peter Strickland (writer and director)
June 2019 (UK release)

Much more on the side of comedy than horror now. Although I liked Strickland's first feature film Berberian Sound Studio, I was somewhat let down by bad/missing subtitles that made the film far arcane than it needed to be. At any rate I'd heard good things about this film and was pleased to have discovered it. I'm surprised that it has gone over so well outside of the UK as it's style and humour seems utterly British to me and can't imagine how this would be received elsewhere. At first blush you might think that this is going to be a cynical critique of our love of shopping and the perils thereof, but instead there doesn't seem to be anything as straightforward going on in Strickland's script. Instead it seems to conjure up more of a 'feeling' (and a very tactile one) of Dario Argento's most colourful and flamboyant horror films (Suspiria definitely) and as I said of the earlier work this film is also a vision of style over story. There are everyday life snapshots here certainly, but centrally the film is mostly of a certain 1980s glamour aesthetic and some very particular female imagery more so than developing a plot of intrigue or suspense. Unlike the three previous films mentioned, there is a certain relishing of the cruel here, that I would normally find off-putting, but the humour in the film is such that it leads me to ignore this and indeed find the unfortunate sufferings of the various characters amusing. Entertainingly provocative.

Film on Friday: 'Strange' choices, reacting before the reaction & pinning the blame

Why is Tilda Swinton playing a character, in the forthcoming Doctor Strange, depicted in the comic books as a Tibetan male?

This has been met with cries of 'white washing' that I would consider well-intentioned but incorrect and possibly unhelpful (see postscript). Much like the habit of describing any bigoted hate speech as 'racist' is also unhelpful, as it masks potentially more difficult discussions that should be made instead.

So, perhaps it is just that it's easier to simply label a form of activity in only one manner and, for example, call everything that involves discriminatory speech 'racist' when actually it is more complicated than that.

Now, I'm not going to make the equally misguided and unhelpful argument that only white men make, the dismissive "there is no such thing as race anyway" argument, which is a form of so-called 'colour blindness' both of which are things that only someone that does NOT suffer from any form of racial discrimination can ever have or make.

Also, this is not to say that 'white washing' doesn't happen and isn't a problem in Hollywood films or entertainment in general. However, as I said, it's complicated and I think this particular case (of Tilda Swinton) has to do with more than any of the articles dealing with the subject have considered.

Let's look at the original character first of all.

The Asian One

The Ancient One, Marvels tells us, was born hundreds of years ago ('over five hundred' which is, I suspect, a time beyond knowing for Americans) in the Himalayas in the area now known as Tibet. Of course, for it not to be Tibet, it would have to have been much more than five hundred years, as the Tibetan Empire existed in the 7th century, which then collapsed in the 9th century and had no central rule (but was still, I assume, Tibet) until the 13th century. At which point the Mongols invaded. Anyway, let's not get into too much of a history lesson about Tibet (something evidently the Marvel writers didn't do either) and instead look at the Ancient One's introduction as a comic book character and the context of the time.

The first appearance of the character was as 'the High Lama' in 1961, and as the 'Ancient One' in 1963, with his origin story only being fully described in a 1966 issue of Strange Tales (#148).

With those dates it seems pretty obvious who was the influence on this character. Namely Tenzin Gyatso, who had fled in exile from Tibet in 1959 after the Tibetan Uprising and was, probably, reasonably famous in the US. The use of the Dalai Lama as your mystical magical, might I even say inscrutable, figure would nowadays reek of Orientalism or exoticism, in the sense of cultural (mis-)appropriation. One could say that therefore it was not an attempt at 'white washing' but rather an attempt to create a new character that doesn't have this exoticised past. That would be an overly kind reading and it's the basis that the film's director used as his defense:

Looking at Marvel movies, I think that we're missing a major character that is Tilda's age and has this kind of strength and power. The Ancient One in the comics is a very old American stereotype of what Eastern characters and people are like, and I felt very strongly that we need to avoid those stereotypes at all costs.

 -Scott Derrickson

However, as I don't think this was Marvel Studios and Disney's reasoning behind the choice. Let's look at the new version then and what those reasons might be.

The 'Celtic' One

Tilda Swinton's character is Celtic. Well, that's nice, you can't be accused of exocitising your own culture after all (for 'own culture' also read 'dominant culture'). Here's Marvel's own defense:

Marvel has a very strong record of diversity in its casting of films and regularly departs from stereotypes and source material to bring its MCU to life. The Ancient One is a title that is not exclusively held by any one character, but rather a moniker passed down through time, and in this particular film the embodiment is Celtic. We are very proud to have the enormously talented Tilda Swinton portray this unique and complex character alongside our richly diverse cast. [my emphasis, see below]

So, while I look forward to Tilda's Scottish accent (this is a lie, I'm not going to see the film) you can't help but wonder if the film-makers really did think, "you know there's just not enough female Scottish wizards in their 50's in film these days," which is factually true, but that doesn't make the basis of their initial claim truthful either. [I emphasised the section in the quote, because it is a blatant lie. The Ancient One was always a singular person, so Disney/Marvel can reshape their own MCU whenever it suits them I suppose...]

A simple answer is provided by former Doctor Strange co-writer (each of these Marvel films tends to go through many 'phases' of writing) C. Robert Cargill who states that the new character was created so that the film would still be marketable in China. Of the character he says:

He originates from Tibet, so if you acknowledge that Tibet is a place and that he’s Tibetan, you risk alienating one billion people who think that that’s bullsh*t and risk the Chinese government going, ‘Hey, you know one of the biggest film-watching countries in the world? We’re not going to show your movie because you decided to get political.’

Now, we could take this as our answer (like the Independent does) and blame China, but this is also too simplistic. I'm not saying that the Chinese Government don't rigorously censor foreign and domestic films, because it evidently does. So, although I'm distrustful of the Chinese Government, I find this answer simply pins the blame elsewhere. It also doesn't help this particular argument that C. Robert Cargill is such a monumental douchebag either, but one shouldn't allow their personal feelings to influence this sort of investigation. Therefore, I apologise, but he really is...

There’s not a lot of talk about, ‘Oh man, they took away the job from a guy and gave it to a woman.’ Everybody kind of pats us on the back for that and then decides to scold us for her not being Tibetan. We knew that the social justice warriors would be angry either way. [my emphasis]

Whose fault is it then? Western cultural exoticism, Chinese corporate authoritarianism, or social justice warriors? Hey, how about, monumental Hollywood douchebags with no balls or ability to create a unique character that isn't merely a cultural stereotype?

Anyway, it seems that what Marvel Films is attempting to do is pit feminism against anti-racism (or at least, anti-cultural misappropriation, bigotry, lazy stereotyping and etc.) in a distraction tactic. In reacting before the presumed reaction they are making sure that the people who would normally point out the 'white washing' are too busy defending the casting of a woman in 'a man's role'.

The problem then, is the film producer's over-reliance on market research and on playing to their presumed audience demographics. Soul-less and by-the-numbers seem to describe this process, except that it is planned for a distinct purpose. To be as popular and make as much money as possible. I've spoken before about how these films are created as cultural events with more of an emphasis on marketing and merchandise than with creating a worthwhile or interesting story. Conniving and reprehensible might therefore be better terms.

In the end, Tilda Swinton's casting achieves one thing. It provides coverage about their film, even if it is negative in tone, still "there is no such thing as bad publicity" and this is further helped by the general feeling (helped by social media) that it's only someone's opinion when it is actually a valid criticism. The chances are that people have already made up their minds about the film, with those positively inclined to the film seeing detractors or even people trying to think rationally about it as 'bitter whiners' who like C. Robert Cargill suggests, "would be angry either way." It's always easier to dismiss something when it doesn't fit in with your simplistic worldview than try and engage meaningfully.

***

Postscript

Having now re-read this and slept on it, something I probably should have done rather just publishing it, I've decided that there's a few things I'd want to add or make clear, but rather than just insert them in the text like it was meant to be there already, I thought it was more honest to add a postscript (although I will change some text based on how it reads and fix grammatical errors).

If it wasn't clear, I'm NOT trying to excuse 'white washing' but detail that more is going on. However, racism with an excuse is still racism, so I'm not saying that Disney/Marvel's corporate 'white washing' is any more excusable than any other straight-forwardly bigoted comment would be.

Indeed, I note the similarities between Cargill's defitantly glib comments with the Disney/Marvel manicured double-speak that both come to similar things. Blaming others or trying to slide out of any personal blame. That the Disney/Marvel executives (who I would suggest they are comprised of 90% white males) claim 'diversity' of casting as an excuse, while all the time probably thinking like Cargill does and trying to second-guess what is popular and what they can get away with.

So, when I said that the cries of 'white washing' were incorrect, I meant that it is too simplistic and that it allows the executives to slide off the hook, when the whole process is much deeper and more entrenched than it might seem. It is made so you have to engage with them on their terms, terms that already have presuppositions built in.

Cargill's claim of, "it's not my fault, the Chinese made me do," is itself obviously baiting. Much like, "we took a guy's job and gave it to a woman." You can't complain, because we gave it to a woman! What are you sexist?

Relates to Disney/Marvel's claim, "we're not racist, we cast a black guy! Why are you complaining about this? What are you racist?"

When they use these accusations against those that would accuse them, one must start already defending their own position. As I said, you're already playing their game.

Anyway, all this will undoubtedly be lost under the positive reviews of the film, which just shows how they get away with it I suppose.

Film on Friday: The Kings of Summer (2013) Dir. Vogt-Roberts

Spoilers! This review/discussion contains some mild spoilers.

I suppose this could be a defence of The Kings of Summer, but unlike the Tideland defence the only thing this film needs defending from is itself.

Released in 2013 and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in that year, it received wild critical acclaim and while the full release did not gather as much praise, it is still a pretty well regarded little film with 76% on Rotten Tomatoes and 61 on Metacritic, which indicated a generally favourable attitude towards the young actors and the first-time director and writer involved with the project. What more therefore needs to be said about this film? Just another coming-of-age comedy (Stand-By-Me-esque) whose whimsical charm gives it a uniqueness. Well, I think coming-of-age is the wrong genre to classify it under, it's more like nostalgia for a simple teenage boyness. I was not surprised to discover the director has worked mostly in short films on the internet, as the aesthetic attitude and especially it's own attention span is obviously influencing this film.

Anyway, here's what I want to describe. What works about this film are the honest glimpses of life as a teenage boy in the 90's in the States, but there's enough similarities for me to recognise many things there too. So, when it's good it reminds us a little of our own boyhoods and the stupidity therein (punching each other in the arm, for example), whether there is anything similarly female there I cannot say, but I doubt it very much (although the only central female part is played reasonably well, considering she's just there to split the friends up and force something like a plot). I say it is a nostalgia for a 90's boyness rather than coming-of-age because although the boy's ages are given in the film (15 years old) it really doesn't seem fixed. Their age is incidental, what is important is that they are young, but not children either. It is the series of visually crisp vignettes that is the emphasis rather than developing a specific time and place from which the character's are shown to grow. For me, the characters act variously between the ages of 12-18 and thus it seems like a collection of the writer's own memories about his childhood. The time of the setting suffers in much the same manner, as some point it seems early 90's (Street Fighter on the console, hooray!) and then the characters are talking on phones that cannot be any earlier than 2002 (at a guess). Setting and character specification then, are not the important features here. Additionally, the 'plot' seems straight out of screen writing 101 and although obviously telegraphed from the start (the main character has a 'dead mom' trope) it still doesn't quite manage to fit within all the goofing around and general fun that is going on. At it's heart this film is primarily a comedy and not one that finds itself too concerned with realism, even the realism of it's own nostalgia.

The three 'Kings of Summer' building their dream house.

The comedy works fairly well, there are some genuinely funny moments, well acted (the 'adult' characters are especially good seasoned comedy actors, who really take a bite out of the script) and there's enough of them that the not-so-funny moments slip past pretty quickly. The comedy character Biaggio (played by Moises Arias) has a number of funny lines and is amusingly endearing if you forget the lack of anything like a character background, other than amusing 'ethnic' weirdness. Indeed, the non-white characters (all 3) are all comic relief; Biaggio himself, Joe's sister's Latino boyfriend, and the Indian Chinese-food delivery guy (ha ha!). That and the fact the main characters are two middle-class white boys lacking in anything like real problems might distance some people. Joe does have a dead mother, but his father cares for him, he does get 'bullied' at school (once, we see his shirt ripped off) but he is also able to talk the girl he likes, and gets invited to parties. Patrick, his friend, is a popular athlete who's only failing is that his parents are embarrassingly smothering towards him, also he has to wear a boot on his foot because he, previous to the film, broke his foot (i.e. not a permanent disfigurement, just a 'thing'). Both families are well-off and the boys aren't in any trouble prior to running away, so when the film tries to force something like real emotion or conflict, it is very jarring.

While watching, I could't help but think that it would have worked better as a TV show. This is because, edited as it is, it feels like we're missing some actual development and are always joining the scene after several previous situations have been passed over. It just cuts in, nothing is explained, and then punch-line, scene over. At the time I wondered if it was this way because the director had relied on a lot of improvisation from his actors, but I now think it was just scripted like this and that this represents an attempt (albeit a failed one) to convey a youthful free-spirited-ness, but that this aesthetic comes from montage heavy short film technique. At any rate, the film reminds me of the British comedy TV show 'The Inbetweeners' that deals with much the same type of group dynamic; all teenage boys, all idiotic and pathetically funny,  the friendship between the 'main' characters and the disruption of girls to that friendship, and the interaction between the adult world of the parents and the boy's own outcast existence. 'The Kings of Summer' TV show, would have much the same feel, although replace the British sourness with the sort of cheery surrealism found in 'Arrested Development' and as a TV show this would give the naturally funny actors some time to find and develop their characters beyond their rather two-dimensional stock.

The Inbetweeners

The mixed bag dynamic of this film is best emphasised with the totally unnecessary Terence-Malicky cinematography of nature we receive, which although quite pretty seems totally at odds with everything else that's going on in the film, both the comedy and the false emotional seriousness. Something I enjoyed about the boy's escape to the 'wild' is that we are shown they aren't very far at all from civilisation. Indeed, they are able to go shopping for supplies regularly and it's possible to get there in a morning's walk, indeed, nothing about it seems to be that rugged or remote and apart from the plot necessary snake they are not in any natural danger. Even the snake-bitten Biaggio is easily taken to hospital in plenty of time to be saved, something accomplished with no real risk or providing anything like a conclusive character development. In short, it doesn't feel like a natural environment at all, more like a comedy stage. Nature is purely incidental here. Compare this with Into The Wild for example.

All this reminds me of my own boyhood and building a much less impressive 'fort' when I was twelve during my school lunch breaks with my friends. However, I suppose there isn't much (if any) wilderness in the UK whereas there is more than enough to get lost in the USA, which makes me question the realism of their ages (15, just to remind you). If I was going to run away and 'be a man' living in the wild at the age of fifteen, I'd get on a bus and head into the actual wilderness, not just the woods near my house, that is much more like the behaviour of younger children (young teenagers at the very best) rather than boys who are very nearly men. Still, I suppose that level of realism isn't the main concern here as I've mentioned earlier.

A 90's video-game kitsch poster for The Kings of Summer

To conclude, although this film is neither as clever nor as unique as it thinks it is and would've probably worked better as a comedy serial (like The Inbetweeners), still it is an interesting film, one that is worth seeing and was worth making. I'd rather something like this was made than Transformers 4 or anything similarly vacuous. So, I hope the director continues to refine an individual voice, that the screenwriter takes chances on his own ideas and doesn't fall into cliched safety, and that the young actors continue to show their promise. Perhaps this is the thing that we find so appealing and lures us back time and again to nostalgia of our childhood, when things were all promise, untested and full of potential.

Cinema on Saturday - Tideland : a quick defence

(Yes, it happened again)

I thought I'd take a short break from writing my Dungeons & Dragons review to talk about a film I saw the other night. Tideland is a 2005 Terry Gilliam film that until Thursday night I had never heard of. Being a fan of most of Terry Gilliam's work I was pleased to discover it and intrigued by the blurb and cover artwork.

First reactions: Tideland is not an easy watch in places. It manages to get under your skin and crawl. It reminded me very strongly of Jan Svankmajer's Alice, which is no surprise as Gilliam himself describes Tideland as "a cross between Alice in Wonderland and Psycho." Perhaps had I known more about the plot of the film I would not have watched it, but I'm glad that I did, because although unsettling in places (and maybe a little too ghoulish) it is a rewarding watch. The performance of Jodelle Ferland is excellent for one so young, which can only be because equally excellent direction. It's no surprise to me that Gilliam understands children as his films have always struck me as being childlike in a way that really remembers what it's like to be a child. 

I later found out that Tideland got quite a hostile critical reaction and has a very low score on both Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes (26% and 30% respectively). Again, I'm glad I didn't know all this before watching the film, although that partially explains why I'd never heard of it. Not an excuse really, why should we base our film-watching habits on the biased views of critics?

This quick response then is a defence of Gilliam's film from the what I see as the personal disgust most reviewers felt when they should have been critically objective in their analysis. Put simply, the film unsettled them and most people don't like that, so having been given a nasty shock they hit back in the only way they could.

What then is so upsetting about the film to so many people? Typically it is because it is dealing with subjects that most people would rather ignore; drug addiction, child neglect, child abuse, isolation, mental illness, death and decay, and the death of so-called innocence. The last is the most important, and as far as I can see the most ignored. Paradoxically the film is about innocence, the entire film being seen through the narrator's eyes, who is a nine-year old girl called Jeliza-Rose.

The romanticisation of innocence. What is innocence? I think that the majority of people have a distorted view of innocence, particularly when it comes to the representation of innocence in film. So, when I talk about 'the death of so-called innocence' in the film I'm talking about the death of this particular innocence. This distorted innocence comes from, first, a refusal to deal with the lives of children, in a sense, it is a failure to properly remember what childhood was like and replace it with fantastical notions of purity that one is constantly fed from representations of children in fiction. The second place this distorted innocence gains it's history is, no surprise, from a populist description of the Judeo-Christian notion of innocence. In this sense innocence is an absolute freedom from the guilt of sinning, something that only the young can have as they have had no experience of evil.

Tideland instead gives us a more realistic view of childhood innocence (albeit an abnormal childhood). In the film's introduction by Gilliam (an odd step, but probably one necessitated by the panning it received)  he makes a plea for us to forget everything we've learned as adults and to remember the resilience of children. Now, although the first is an impossibility, it is directing us towards something important. Innocence in Gilliam's view is more akin to ignorance or lack of knowledge, in which the gaps are filled by imaginative attempts at description or understanding. Children are natural story-tellers, particularly isolated creative children like Jeliza-Rose. I think people came to this film expecting the same old depictions of whimsy, of fantasy, that did not challenge them but instead confirmed their received views of what childhood innocence constitutes. The idea that children can have naive thoughts about intimacy, expressed through childlike notions of 'marriage' and 'kissing' rather than adult understanding of what that means, true though it may be is repellent to the distorted notion of innocence, because this shows children trying to make sense of the adult world rather than being somehow unconnected to this world we understand. That by creating this false notion of childhood innocence as being utterly unaware of adult notions allows the belief that we can be 'purified from the world' and it's horrors at least for a little time.

Gilliam's second plea, for us to remember the resilience of children, explains why Jeliza-Rose can deal with all the horrible things that happen to her and still carry on. That see can live in a house with her dead father for so long seemingly without concern while her 'adventures' continue is from this childhood innocence that doesn't understand, it is this ignorance that gives her resilience. Although perhaps we could also say that children are more resilient as they have not made decisions on what things are meant to mean, these actions are fluid and can be interpreted in different ways, they are receiving so much information about the adult world that they are not able to make immediate understanding and instead create a story with which to temporarily explain, until they are told about how they should feel.

I'll stop myself there. There's plenty more I could say about the film; beautifully shot prairie vistas, the 'Southern Gothic' characters Dickens (Brendan Fletcher) and Dell (Janet McTeer), cameos by Jennifer Tilly and Jeff Bridges, Gilliam's trademark cinematography, and so forth. Whatever else one might say about the film, it's understanding of what constitutes actual childhood innocence that over-rides the false romanticised ideal of innocence is the film's best achievement and one worth defending.

Cinema on Saturday: Rewatching Kurosawa - Seven Samurai

Four hundred years ago, Japan was a land of civil wars.

Bandits roamed the lawless country, terrorizing farmers.

SEVEN SAMURAI

Finally in this week's revisiting of old personal favourites is Akira Kurosawa's 1954 chanbara classic Seven Samurai.

And yes, Cinema on Saturday is new, I missed my own deadline for Film on Friday, but don't want to leave it a week. Really, I don't know how more regular bloggers manage it...


If you asked me twelve or fifteen years ago what my favourite film was my immediate answer would have been "Seven Samurai," but times change, my attraction to samurai culture (which came about after my first viewing of Seven Samurai) has waned and I've since discovered many other films that I now love. So that now the question of what my favourite films are, is normally met with a long thoughtful silence and then perhaps a tentative mention of some recent films I can remember enjoying.

I can't really remember exactly when I first saw Seven Samurai but I do remember the vivid exciting effect it had upon me. I'd never seen a film like it, but at the time I wasn't even sure of the film's name. This was probably in 1994-1995 (there are some specifics that let me work out this rough estimate) and I probably missed the first ten minutes or so. Without a TV guide, internet access, or any other way of finding out it took me another few years before I learned the name of the film and about the other films of Akira Kurosawa. Having since enjoyed many other chanbara films (that is, sword-fighting samurai films) I've since come to realise that although it was Seven Samurai that helped inspire that love, it is a rather different type of film, not really chanbara at all, as these films tend to be very stylised and have very typical conventions. Indeed, Seven Samurai is often referred to as a Jidaigeki (which simply means a period drama), in order to emphasise the relative lack of sword-fighting action (until the last third of the film), but as with all great films with a period setting it is actually making a commentary about modern life. That is, life for the young Japanese in the 1950s and how roles have or were changing.

In some regards then, Seven Samurai is entirely the wrong film to watch to get one into Zatoichi and Lone Wolf and so forth, as it actively shuns away from showing our heroes as invincible perfect warriors with beautifully choreographed fighting scenes.

The downpour during the final battle.

Instead Seven Samurai, despite the later action, is a meditative stance on how one could live one's life well in such hard, dangerous, and chaotic times. Unlike The Hobbit's thirteen dwarves, the seven samurai characters are sufficiently well-described and complex to call them an ensemble performance. However, of the seven there are three characters that have more of an impact upon how we view the film (how I do, at any rate). These three are; Kambei the leader, Katsushiro the eager student, and Kikuchiyo the reckless wannabe samurai. The master and student relationship between Kambei and Katsushiro is one of the many interrelationships between the samurai and the villagers, however, it is also the most persistent and developed throughout the film. Also, it is a relationship that occurs repeatedly in Kurosawa's films.

(L-R) Kambei, Katsushiro, and Kikuchiyo.

Both Katsushiro and Kikuchiyo approach Kambei as students, but Katsushiro's request (above) is of the traditional kind, whereas Kikuchiyo just walks up to Kambei and says nothing, while pacing around him; either unsure how to ask or unsure whether he'd want to serve him or anyone anyway. Kambei as pragmatic as he may be, is still a traditionalist and finally accepts Katsushiro's request and warns him off the strange and reckless Kikuchiyo. They walk away from this; master and student leaving the vagabond, but later they will be rejoined and Kambei finds that this rogue has something to teach him.

One of the most endearing characteristics about Seven Samurai are the individual performances that help define the separate nature of each samurai. This raises them above the kind of samurai archetype more commonly found in chanbara films (think Western archetypes for a similar comparison) and even the silent swordsman Kyuzo, who is closest to a stock character, is defined by; the excellent performance the actor gives, and his tragic death.

Kyuzo reflecting before combat.

Kyuzo dies from a gunshot wound, even the most skillful samurai is helpless against the power of the guns wielded by the bandits. Heihachi, Gorobei, and finally Kikuchiyo - who dies avenging Kyuzo - are all also killed by guns. Symbolically we could say it represents the power of the samurai being destroyed by modern technology, something that will come to reorganise Japanese society.

It is not just the samurai that have definition, the villagers too are shown to be individual characters with their own fears and motivations. Of greatest importance is the romance that develops between Katsushiro and Shino, a daughter of one of the peasants Manzo (who goes to great length to ensure that this doesn't happen and fails), this is the only other transition between caste roles that we see during film. The other being Kikuchiyo, who is revealed to be the son of a farmer and not a samurai at all. Both these attempts at cultural shift end badly for all involved. Still, it is the tension that these hierarchical roles create and their failed attempts to break free from them that engages us. Kikuchiyo's impassioned speech about the farmers shows this enmity and divide between them and the samurai. When it is revealed that the farmers had stolen samurai armour, the samurai are shocked and then outraged, Kyuzo even says he'd like to kill everyone of the villagers. Kikuchiyo, clad in some of this armour, then berates these so-called noble samurai. If the farmers seem like animals to them and fight and lie and cheat to survive, who made them like this? The oppressive lords and their enforcers the samurai. It is the system of feudal control that has created this terrible situation and whereas this speech helps create some understanding between samurai and farmer, it cannot remove it, nor can it stop the chaotic murderous bandits. 

The incredible Toshiro Mifune as Kikuchiyo

The action scenes are absorbing and kinetic, but also realistic and make great use of atmospheric mist and rain effects. Kurosawa was a master of editing and filming action scenes, with his use of tracking shots and sudden cuts and wipes we are pulled into the action. It is also Kurosawa's use of on-location scenery that helps add believability to the story. The setting becomes another character, the world of feudal Japan.

Interestingly it was originally planned as six samurai, with Kikuchiyo coming about quite late on in the production. Mifune was given free range to improvise and develop his character, this helps give the modern audience unfamiliar with samurai tropes a way into the story.

These samurai are all practical pragmatic career soldiers and not honour-bond devotees to tradition. There is a Zen-Bushido correlation that is shown in Seven Samurai to be one that helps the helpless, this is the doctrine Kambei lives by. It is in opposition to the warped notion of Bushido that pervaded Japan during WWII and led to a suicidally violent nationalism (such as Yukio Mishima also lived and died by). For all their adherence to this 'good' Bushido the samurai are still melancholy figures. "I've got nothing out of fighting, I'm alone in the world." Kambei says early in the film. The constant warfare of their existence only brings them a swift and sudden death (like Kyuzo). At the end of the film Kambei says to his friend Shichiroji, "We've lost again. The farmers have won. Not us." The farmers have something to fight for, their village, the samurai only have their fading ideals.

It is an incredible film, one that belies its 3 hours and 10 minute run time, it is an action film that is anti-violence, it is a samurai film that is anti-tradition, it is funny, warm, sad, exciting, and easily one of the greatest films ever made - I still think.

The village, saved.