PHOTO PROVIDED Five members of the “Seven Samurai” are pictured, along with a farmer liaison, furthest back at middle. The leader of the group, Kambei (Takashi Shimura) is at left, and important character Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune) is seen holding his sword over his shoulder, second from right.

With all the rumblings about the future of HBO Max pending the merger with WB/Discovery, I’ve decided to try to enjoy some of the bountiful archives on the platform just in case something happens to them. To that end, I was looking at what was available this weekend, and noticed that HBO Max has the Japanese classic “Seven Samurai” by Akira Kurosawa — a movie that I had always heard a lot about, but had never actually seen.

If you haven’t heard of this movie, perhaps another name will ring some bells: “The Magnificent Seven.” That film, considered to be among the best Western genre films ever made, came out six years after “Seven Samurai,” and used the same story elements, just shifted across cultures.

I was initially intimidated upon seeing the runtime for “Seven Samurai” — 3 hours and 27 minutes is a hefty watch. But once things started rolling, it moved along at a brisk pace. Individual scenes can feel long due to long shots that focus on character emotion, but the overall movie flows well.

If I have a specific complaint with the pacing, it’s that it takes what feels like an eternity to get started.

The general plot of the movie will sound familiar: a village is being raided by bandits, and the villagers decide that their only path to survival is to find masterless samurai to defend them in exchange for food, as soon the bandits will take too much from the village and render it unable to survive.

A delegation of villagers go to a nearby town and attempt to find samurai.

While I understand that this section is important for the ultimate message of the movie, the viewer doesn’t yet have any real attachment to the village or villager characters, and I will confess that my attention wandered quite a bit until the first samurai was located — the leader of the group, Kambei, played by Takashi Shimura, who you might recognize for having played the Professor Kyohei Yamane in the original 1954 “Godzilla” movie.

The rest of the samurai are located fairly quickly, although they only have six members on the team. The final member, a nameless ronin they call Kikuchiyo, persists despite the party’s attempts at driving him away as a worthless drunk. Kikuchiyo, played by Toshiro Mifune, is one of the more important characters in the film, despite his initial appearance and goofy, almost caricature-like actions. If you’ve ever seen the classic 1980 mini-series “Shogun,” you’ll recognize Mifune: he starred in it as Tokugawa Ieyasu, also known as Toranaga.

A historical aside on Japan: the film is set during the Sengoku period of Japanese history, which stretched from 1467-1615. It is known more colloquially in the west as the Warring States Era. During this period, the feudal system in Japan collapsed, leading to almost 150 years of constant violence and instability.

Japan’s feudal structure was set up with the Emperor (already largely a ceremonial role by this point) and the Shogun (basically a king) at the top, and the daimyos under them. Daimyos were essentially the Japanese equivalent of European lords — landowners who controlled large swaths of resources and population. Under the daimyos were the samurai class: basically professional warriors who served as minor nobles and retainers in the courts of their daimyo. The samurai had strict codes of behavior to follow (bushido), and have been depicted as totally honor-driven.

During the Sengoku period, the centralized power of the Shogunate collapsed, causing the various daimyos to war endlessly with each other. This resulted in no small number of samurai and rank-and-file soldiers who wound up lordless after their daimyo fell in battle or was assassinated. Masterless soldiers typically ended up becoming bandits or swearing to another daimyo.

Samurai, on the other hand, were unmistakable. A masterless samurai became a ronin. This is an important distinction in the movie, because ronin were considered in the culture of the time to have lost their honor. Previously, samurai were expected to commit ritual suicide after the fall of their master. To not do so was an act of cowardice, and thus a mark of shame.

However, the Sengoku period saw such social churn that the class would’ve been wiped out, so the cultural norm shifted. As it turns out, during a time of war, professional soldiers carry a premium.

This is all an explanation for the power dynamics that are at work in the film — and is an important veneer that Western reimaginings completely miss.

The farmers seek samurai to protect them from the bandits. However, at the very beginning of the movie, they note that their lord is cowardly and only heeds their call after the bandits have stolen their food. He will not send troops to protect them.

They must turn to hungry, masterless, dishonored ronin for help.

This also turns up again in a subplot involving one of the villager’s daughters — the father has her cut her hair and pretend to be a boy upon the arrival of the men, out of fear for what might happen to her.

This wouldn’t be necessary with “proper” samurai, but these are considered ronin, regardless of their generally-pure intentions towards the village.

At first I felt that the subplot was a bit unnecessary, but as I considered it more over the course of the film, I understood at least one reason for it.

One of the samurai discovers her, and they get along splendidly, because this is still a movie, after all, and of course they do. The samurai in question is the second samurai we meet, a youngster named Katsushiro, who is more appropriately the son of a samurai than one himself, with dreams of greatness. Through Katsushiro, we learn of the plight of the samurai — they are trapped between masters and the farmers, destined to fight but never to attain happiness; expected to do great deeds, but to never be truly rewarded.

Some spoilers ahead, but the ending is important to talk about in this context as well.

Four of the seven samurai end up dead in the end. The bandits are all defeated, and as the remaining three samurai watch the villagers set to sowing their crops, singing happily the entire time, one of them notes that, “In the end, we’ve lost this battle too. The victory belongs to those peasants. Not to us.”

The samurai who survived are left with no choice but to return to their wanderings. The villagers make it abundantly clear that their relationship is over now that the threat is passed. They simply return to their happy — albeit hard — lives, while the surviving ronin must return to a life of wandering through a society which ultimately merely uses and then discards them.

Or, at least, that’s my reading of it.

Again, all of this subtext is missing from the many Western retellings of this story. “The Magnificent Seven” is a wonderful film in its own right, and it does try to adapt many of the concepts of “Seven Samurai,” right down to the ending, in fact, which is a nearly-direct paraphrasing.

But it lacks the gravitas lent to it by the weight of history and culture: despite America’s aggrandizement of “the western,” the period only lasted roughly thirty years, from 1865-1895.

And, of course, much of the credit must go to Kurosawa, who brought all of that out through his masterful filmography — to the extent that much of Kurosawa’s work would go on to become a cornerstone of Hollywood blockbusters to the point that his influence is seen to this day.

A few examples include plot elements like the idea of a group of strangers coming together to defeat a menace (“Avengers,” anyone?) to cinematic elements like the use of rain for a climactic and usually pyrrhic victory (“Blade Runner,” “Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers,” “Matrix: Revolutions,” and even “Beauty and the Beast” come immediately to mind).

And I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention George Lucas’s well-established drawing from Kurosawa’s work for the original “Star Wars” trilogy.

I look forward to noticing even more homages and inspired elements popping up everywhere, now that I’ve finally watched this film.

“Seven Samurai” was not rated, but is likely fine for most audiences starting in the early teens. Some of the plot might go over the head of younger viewers, but at worst it’s a fine action flick with a bunch of funny swordsmen. Nothing too graphic is shown, although there are notable deaths among the characters.

As a note, the film is in black and white, and is Japanese language only, with English subtitles. Those things bother some people — but hopefully that isn’t a deal-breaker, because the film is absolutely worth it.

“Seven Samurai” is available for streaming on HBO Max, or you can rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Vudu, and others.

——

Arianna McKee is Design Editor at The Express