Lots of great movies stand the test of time. Seven Samurai simply doesn't. You're lying and deceiving yourself if you consider this to be a great movie.
Why do people rate this so highly?
1. It's in Japanese
2. It involves Samurai
3. It's old
4. Kurosawa
5. Relative obscurity
All of these factors allow people to like something non-mainstream and thus profess superiority.
Look, no doubt this is a relevant film in understanding the evolution of moviemaking. But historical significance alone doesn't make for a great film. While various action shots might have been ground-breaking for the time and stunning to audiences in the 50s, they simply don't hold up decades later.
The movie is extraordinarily long- well clearly, we must get a great character development of the Samurai then? Nope. Hardly anything.
Fantastic dialog? Nope. Perhaps the subtitles weren't great, but discourse is extremely shallow most of the time.
A real emotional involvement? A sense of urgency? Excitement? Nope. Aside from fleeting moments in the first two hours and a little later on, you get almost nothing. There's a persistent and constant malaise as characters slog through the plot.
Instead the movie lags and relies on portraying mediocre sets and "action". I'm sure audiences in the 50s would consider the film almost immersive into various landscrapes. As a modern movie goer, a few fake trees with a backdrop isn't engaging by itself. A character falling into a pile of fake flowers shot in blakc and white does nothing for me.
So yes, if you watch this you'll see the development of interesting camera techniques that would become staples of work to follow. But as a movie, bleh, terrible pacing, shallow characters and a work that falls flat emotionally. And that's the opposite what good movies are supposed to be- entertainment through delivery of a compelling story.
If you want to see a Kurosawa film that still holds up, look at "Only the Bad Sleep Well", which has some absolutely fantastic camerawork, an engaging plot and delivers a gripping story.
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