| |  | DVD Seven Samurai - 3 Disc Remastered Edition (Criterion Collection Spine # 2) |  | | | | | | | | | | Rating:  - This Movie Will Change Your Life and The World
This is the story of seven samurai who stood up for the forsaken and abandoned souls of society. They risked their lives for these peasants against a band of bandits. They didn't fight for money, glory, or legacy. They fought because it was the right thing to do...
This is the masterpiece that all epics are measured by.
Rating:  - A Towering Classic Desecrated by Translator Linda Hoagland
For discriminating film fans, I strongly recommend seeking out older, more nimble translations of Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai," to compare against this latest version by Criterion Collection.
Unfortunately, Linda Hoagland's English translation in this version does a grave disservice to viewers and to the filmmakers who created this cinematic masterwork. Throughout the film, Hoagland's translation manages to be at near complete odds with the tone, nuance, subtle yet bracing eloquence, even humor, of Kurosawa's epic drama. (Incredibly, she even makes English sound horrible. She has no sense of cadence, absolutely NO EAR FOR ANY LANGUAGE.)
She also demonstrates a woeful inability to grasp and therefore convey the essence of the film's characters. Simply horrible. As a result, the translated words and expressions of the film's characters seem to be from an altogether different time and culture than the one depicted by Kurosawa and his collaborators, with the characters feeling disembodied and alienated from themselves, each other, and the film itself. This is truly regrettable, because it leaves first-time viewers, especially, with misimpressions of the film on so many levels.
Absent any lingual finesse, Hoagland's translation assumes such gross and indelicate liberties with the dialog, period setting, culture, and characterizations that it grates miserably against the very beauty and power and heart and spirit of this magnificent film -- quite an ignominious feat. It also evidences the power of language in cinema, but in the worst way. One winces to think that Kurosawa-san, et al, are turning in their graves at Hoagland's single-handed insult.
By extension, Hoagland's translation also undermines the greater emotional impact and experience of the film in its larger import as allegory. In doing so, she undercuts the filmmakers' attempt to convey a particular, imaginative vision of the Japanese people's experience of their history, culture, and struggle for individual and national identity amid the rapid onset of changes and complexities in the 20th century, relative to the country's feudal and rural past.
For this, Hoagland and Criterion Collection should be held accountable for this expediently crass, "contemporary" translation. How was such unmitigated butchery of this truly phenomenal film allowed to happen? To bonafide cineastes, this is unbelievable... maddening... and yet more evidence of the continually spiraling dive in U.S. standards of quality and fidelity to cinema as cultural document and art form. In this light, Ms. Hoagland's translation in this Criterion Collection version merits nothing but disdain.
Despite the technical quality of this print, any purchase of this DVD only encourages more of the same abysmal standards. The degree to which Hoagland's translation ruins the film, at least for some of us, far outweighs ANY negligible shortcoming in the print of previous versions. Indeed, compared to the absolutely horrid effect of her translation, any print differences are secondary and nearly indistinguishable in terms of the film's emotional and artistic impact -- which is absolutely inextricable from the language.
It's the MEANING of the film's narrative that most matters. And, for those of us who know of what we are speaking and who respect the poetry of language and culture, the effect of Hoagland's interference with that experience is analogous to razor blades across the eye (no insult to Bunuel intended), or acid thrown on bare skin. Hers is a most dubious achievement: "outdoing" the masterful hand of Kurosawa, et al, with one swipe of a translation. (I believe Ms. Hoagland is also responsible for the English translation of a "Cowboy Pictures" distribution/DVD of this film, from several years ago, wherein she also evidenced her execrable ineptitude at some of the most critical, moving moments of the film, but not nearly as egregiously as here.)
Hopefully, however, the rich and insightful work of authentically capable, intellectually astute, and keenly sensitive scholars, translators, and critics (from around the globe) will, in time, come to prevail over the rampant distortions and faux "authority" of those persons undeserving of the task.
At present, there is, for example, the brilliant auteur director Kitano Takeshi -- who is too independent (he owns his own film production company), smart, savvy (and still alive) to allow his work to become the botched object of abject English translation. Or, so, one would hope.
Rating: - You don't know the meaning of EPIC or cinematic ART until you watch a film like this one...
You've watched films like The Lord of the Rings and The Matrix and you think they are some of the most brilliant, epic and artistic films you might have seen. But I have a question to ask you, have you seen Seven Samurai?
If you haven't, then you have yet to know the true meanings of EPIC or cinema ART. Do yourself a favor and watch this breath-taking film! The story is rather simple - a village becomes threatened by a swarm of Bandits and the farmers decide to hire Samurai to help defend their village as the Bandits begin their assault. But the depth of the film, is astonishing! What then becomes in the first hour, a great structure of story and character building, when finally the remaining hour is filled with breath-taking action sequences that you've never quite seen before in a movie. Not to mention the fantastic music. This is a movie I can watch over and over, because this is a great example of a REAL movie!
Hands-down one of the greatest films ever made. A true film about honor, bravery and sacrifice.
Rating:  - Surprising Charm In Masterful Epic
"Charming" is perhaps the last adjective one would expect to hear in connection with an old black-and-white samurai movie.But at every turn, from Gorobei's jesting response to the initial test set for him by Kambei, to Kambei's joking at the expense of the freshly de-flowered Katsushiro before the final battle, this movie shows an easy, earthy, sense of humor.This care, this willingness to psychologize each character, saves this movie from the pitfalls of most "battle epics."
Yet, Kurosawa's technique is not less exalted in the action sequences.If you are familiar with "Ran", or "Throne of Blood," you are aware that he is the master of the big, wide-screen shot of massed cavalry advances.In "Ran," for instance, the battles outside of Hidetora's castle, with the washes of orange and pink, are masterful, painterly filmmaking.
Here, the battle scenes are of a more claustrophobic nature, and all the more dramatic, as a result.The mounted bandits are shown vying at close quarters with the farmer pikemen in a grisly kaleidoscope of straining arms, tendons, hooves, spears, swords.For those who would criticize the action sequences of "Seven Samurai," the following question is in order:which puts more of a demand on the imaginations -- the "suspension of disbelief" -- of its viewers?A slick, cartoony CGI combat sequence (cf, "Star Wars," "The Matrix", "The Hulk"), or sharp-focus photography of actual stuntmen simulating 16th-century combat?
Ultimately, Kurosawa is able to strike a perfect balance between breadth of vision, and sharpness of focus.In doing so, he creates a full, but sharply-detailed universe for the action to unfold in.
Rating: - The Peasant and the Sword
Words fail to praise the action-packed period film that Akira Kurosawa created in 1954 Japan. Two years after the allies released the Japanese from occupation, Kurosawa directed the best film ever, in my opinion, for those that desire evil to be overthrown and justice to prevail. The plight of the peasants is graphically detailed in breath-taking scenes of beauty and poise. Coming to their aid is the most virtuous samurai in film history, ready at a moment to battle the bandits that would rob, rape, and murder the helpless peasantry. The camera angles and positioning are excellent beyond belief, the costumes are real, and the mud is thick for the final battle scene. Any movie fan that doesn't have the recent Criterion Collection Seven Samurai is missing out on a classic. Honor, loyalty, skill, and faithcome alive on the screen in 17th century Japan.
| | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 | Next > |
| | | |  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | 
2004-2007 Copyright © , All right reserved.
the website powered by web hosting. |
|
|
