September 14: Ran (1985 -- Akira Kurosawa)

★★★★★

September 14: The Cowboys (1972 -- Mark Rydell)

★★★★

September 10: Contagion (2011 -- Steven Soderbergh)

★★★★

This is an enjoyable film, like I often find Soderbergh’s.  It is fast-paced, beautiful, lyrically edited and somewhat complex.  In structure, it reminds me of Traffic more than many of his later films have.   Like Traffic, Contagion has several stories woven around a central concern: In Traffic, it’s drugs; here, it’s the outbreak of a super influenza.   Contagion follows several stories of people touched by the epidemic, some of the stories intersecting each other briefly -- like Mitch’s and Dr. Mears’ --  while others don’t meet at all.  The main concern of the film is stopping the epidemic, and the film moves this issue forward while each of the component stories finds its own conflicts and resolutions.  I always enjoy this form of storytelling, which calls to mind Altman and PT Anderson.

I like the technical elements here, too.  The editing is so fluid that I gave myself to it and found it has such a strong rhythm that it is close to visual music.  And there is more than fluid editing because cuts frequently come at moments that draw parallels between the various stories.  One cut I remember comes after a crane shot has followed a car down a hillside curve, and as the camera completes a sweeping move, there is a cut; The cut becomes part of the rhythm of the camera movement, completing that movement.  Because of the film's many sound bridges, the editing that draws parallels between stories and cutting as part of the cinematography, I found many beautiful moment to respond to in the film.

It’s also good to see a film that recognizes the role that the internet has taken in lives today.  From Jory making narrative comments on IM to the awful character of Alan Krumwiede, an unscrupulous, paranoid, self-serving blogger, the net has its place.  And the film shows both the up side and down side of it. 

There are definitely moments here that creak a bit with too much Hollywood contrivance, and there is one big logical (or story) flaw about testing a vaccine, but Contagion is a fun, capable and even touching film.  Films like this one are why I make it a point to catch Soderbergh’s work.

Atlanta's Own

September 5: Kagemusha (1980 -- Akira Kurosawa)

★★★★★

September 1: The Magnificent Seven (1960 -- John Sturges)

★★★

In at least one element, The Magnificent Seven far outstrips its inspiration, Seven Samurai: the music.  Elmer Bernstein’s theme here has become THE soundtrack I associate with a western, and I was half surprised to find that it came from this film and not from Bonanza or a John Ford movie.  This bold, soaring music is the sonic version of the big, open spaces of the West.  It’s fair to call it classic, with no reservations.

The rest of The Magnificent Seven falls short of the source material, though.  Sturges tries to preserve the epic breadth of Samurai, but having to cut 1/3 of the running time of the original clearly forces some cuts in scale.  We don’t meet all the gunfighters and get to know them; they become more like shallow stereotypes or one-note-nellies than the characters in Samurai.  More to the point, we don’t see these samurai, er, gunfighters, interact with each other significantly, so there’s none of the team growth we see in Samurai.  Ultimately, we’re not as invested in these characters as we are in Kurosawa’s.  For example, Harry, who is supposed to be Chris Larabee’s old friend, only has one major dialog with the leader, and that consists of doubting him.  Harry’s one-note is to constantly question villagers about the ulterior motive that Larabee doesn’t have, but there’s not growth or dramatic outcome from it.  Likewise, Lee’s sole trope is to fret about fear through his little screen time.  He never has any real interaction with any of the team members, though his courage suddenly emerges at the end (for some reason….).  The team of The Magnificent Seven doesn’t build, and as viewers, we’re far less involved with them than we are with the samurai.

Director John Sturges makes gestures toward some of the themes in Seven Samurai, too, but his film doesn’t quite pull them together the way Kurosawa’s does.  The education-of-a-youth theme is a good fit for a western, but we don't see much of that happening here.  And although gun slingers and farmers are different classes, they aren’t as hierarchically different as samurai and farmers, so Magnificent Seven can't do much to question class with these characters.  Sturges’ men may share their stew with the villagers, who are getting by on tortillas, but the implications of that gesture don’t so much question class distinctions as point to a sense of shared humanity.  Even the love story between Chico and Petra is without the social implications of the romance between samurai Katsushiro and farm girl Shino.  And the love story here is very rushed, anyway.

The stakes are lower in The Magnificent Seven than in Seven Samurai, and the audience’s involvement with the characters less.  But it’s still a grand, fun movie with Yul Brenner machismo and Steve McQueen good looks.  And unforgettable music.

August 30: Seven Samurai/Shichinin no samurai (1954 -- Akira Kurosawa)

★★★★★

Thought it was about time I checked this movie out, so I settled in for half of it….and couldn’t leave.  I think this film plugged into many of the themes I like: its warm humanity, its elder-teaching-youth theme, its plot of building a team to accomplish an ethical goals.  These are things I always enjoy in a film, and I thoroughly enjoyed them here. 

I like the breadth of Seven Samurai, too.  We follow not only the seven samurai but also some of the villagers.  And like Altman would later, Kurosawa develops a character arc for many of the characters instead of just one or two.  We follow the leader, Kambei; the youth, Katsushiro; the samurai wanna be, Kikuchiyo; Kambei’s friend, Shichiroji; kendo master, Kyuzo;   the villager, Rikichi; Katsushiro’s love interest, Shino; and many others.  It takes a 3.5-hour film to do that, and the movie doesn't waste a second.  Although it doesn’t develop any of these characters in real depth, they’re all more than mere ciphers for an idea or stereotypes as the movie follows their growing together to accomplish a goal.  And there are touching moments as we learn about them: Katsushiro’s tossing money to ensure the villagers can get rice of the samurai and Kikuchio’s unintended revelation that he has a farming background, for example.  These two characters in particular also tread along social class boundaries, putting them at the center of one of the themes of the film. 

I was also relieved that I wasn’t put off by cultural elements of the film.  The over-the-top theatricality that I sometimes find in Japanese film generally takes me out of the movie, but that didn’t happen in Seven Samurai.  Toshino Mifune’s Kikuchiyo is big here, and I sometimes found him too big; his actions go beyond what seems the norm for the movie.  But Mifune never takes him so far out that I can’t continue to see him in the film.  The ensemble models how to respond to Kikuchiyo, and I found that easy to follow.

If Altman had done an action movie, it would have looked like Seven Samurai.  Warm, human, engaging, deep, poignant, epic and ethical. And photographed beautifully.  I know this film is seen as the predecessor for many team-action films, but it has more affective complexity than any other I’m aware of.  Seven Samurai is a wonderful cinematic achievement and testimony to what cinema can do.  And worth many hours of rewatching.

August 30: Sanjuro/Tsubaki Sanjûrô (1962 -- Akira Kurosawa)

★★★
It seems this film gets short shrift when people talk about it with Yojimbo, but I like this sequel better than the first.  There’s a more action in this one, and there’s humanity in its gentle comedy.  Many of the smiles and laughs come from the contrast of earnest, impetuous youth contrasted and skilled, weary experience of maturity.  And this set-up even propells the story on several occasions.  There’s a similar deft humor in the courtly ladies, who emphasize conventional correctness over expediency at nearly every turn.  But their comic relief, too, has its warm and knowing truth, recognized by Sanjuro both when he has cascades of white camellias tossed in the stream and when he quotes the older lady about the sheathed sword.  In fact, despite all its violence, Sanjuro affirms the wisdom of maturity over the earnest strength of youth throughout.  Or maybe I’m just getting old.

I find Sanjuro himself interesting here as in Yojimbo.  Unlike today’s action heroes, Sanjuro keeps his strength in check until he judges he needs it, and he is a paragon of judgment.  Of course, he could take on Schwarzenegger if he needed to, but Sanjuro prefers to work in the realm of the trickster rather than the elephant, accomplishing his goals with his wit rather than his martial prowess.  In addition to his controlled strength, this samurai is another 60s antihero, rejecting the status quo and following his own high moral code.  He has more depth here than in Yojimbo, and that adds to the appeal of the film, too.

So Sanjuro is a fun action movie with a compelling hero and a moral focus.  I was a little surprised at how much I enjoyed it.