The Seven Samurai

You don't have to answer all of these, but pick the few that interest you the most:

“Seven Samurai” is set in a very foreign environment – both in terms of place and of historical period. Did you have trouble relating to this film because it was so “foreign”? By the end of the film, did you feel more comfortable with this environment? What did Kurosawa do to help audiences connect better to this film?

A writer on Japanese film has said that the great Japanese filmmakers have “the knack of capturing mood and atmosphere, of presenting the environment as an extension of man.” Do you find this is true of Kurosawa in this film?

 “Seven Samurai” is also very much a war movie. Like most war films it treats the efforts of different types of people, different segments of society, to pull together and fight a common enemy. Another aspect of the war film is that it tends, like most action films, to use weapons symbolically: each kind of weapon has special connotations attached to it, connotations which the filmmaker can use deliberately. How does Kurosawa use (a) the sword, (b) the spear, (c) the bow and arrow, and (d) the gun?

 You probably noticed that each of the seven samurai is introduced differently, and that each has a distinct personality. Who is your favorite of the seven samurai, and why?

 Like most carefully structured dramas, “Seven Samurai” begins with the disruption of the status quo (the peasants can no longer peacefully live their lives and till their land) and ends when that status quo is restored. Still, the experience has had a profound effect on the peasants. How do they change in order to meet their crisis?

As in most war films, and many Westerns, this movie works with a coming-of-age theme, in its use of Katsushiro, the young samurai. What does Katsushiro come to learn about war, society, and life in general by the end of the film?