I am a huge fan of Kurosawa, so I wanted to start the semester with a video essay I hadn’t seen on his work that I hadn’t seen before. So, I watched The Cinema Cartography’s “Seven Samurai- Drama Through Action.” I’ve seen Seven Samurai twice, but haven’t in a couple of years so it was really fun to be reminded why I love the film so much. In the video essay, The Cinema Cartography asserted that Kurosawa’s action in Seven Samurai is better than that of the action flicks today because Seven Samurai’s is much more emotionally impactful and revealing. Although the claim is bold, I think they dissect Kurosawa’s techniques in a way that heavily supports their thesis.
For example, one of the things I learned was for each filming of the deaths of the bandits, the typical pattern begins with the shot of the samurai attacking the bandit, and it immediately cuts to the area where the bandit will fall BEFORE the bandit actually falls. This makes the fall of the bandit much more impactful to the audience because we are much more aware of the consequence of the killing, not just aware that the good guys did something cool. The video essay also gives insight into several other techniques Kurosawa uses to add emotional impact, so if you’ve seen the movie, I highly recommend the video.
About the medium of video-essay itself, one thing that I really appreciated was The Cinema Cartography’s use of sound in explaining a certain clip. For example, when dissecting an action sequence between a samurai and a bandit, they would slowly turn up the volume as he was finishing his voice-over, so right as he finished, we could hear in full sound a great example of their point. The effect was a simultaneous intellectual realization of the gravity of the point with a sensory and artistic appreciation of both the insight and Kurosawa’s work.
September 17, 2024 at 10:15 pm
It’s fascinating to see how the analysis of the cinematography has deepened your appreciation of Kurosawa’s work. What I appreciated learning the most is how Kurosawa focuses less on the action and more on the consequence of the action. This is really eye opening because I feel that modern action movies have become so dull, monotonous and very predictable. Focusing on the consequences makes the action more emotionally resonant because it shifts the viewer’s attention from the act itself to understanding the significance of each moment. The video essay is very thoughtfully pieced together and comparing the two movies with examples help better emphasise Kurosawa’s technique.