I must endure two or three caterpillars…

I recently went home for two weeks.  Home, for the uninitiated, is Deland, Florida.  It was fun, but I remembered why I don’t go home often.  Florida has horrible weather, even compared to Oklahoma, though ironically I missed some major flooding by being in Florida so it all worked out.

On my last day of vacation my mother and I went to the Goodwill to catch some deals.  Before that we went to the Deland Fish House for some fresh seafood.  While at Goodwill I came across some worthwhile reads for cheap, but my mom came across a book I had only heard of and very little.  It was “The Little Prince,” by Antoint de St. Exupery.  At first I overlooked it and moved on.  On further deliberation I went back and got it.  It was an old edition that still had the dust jacket with the sublimely simple artwork, though a bit charmingly torn around the edges.

I’m glad I went back because I read it on my flight home and couldn’t have been more amazed.  This may be the greatest children’s book ever.  It may be one of the greatest books ever.

I will not give you a synopsis.  It would not do you any favors because it is short and needs to be experienced with a clean slate.

Do yourself a favor and read it.

“Well, I must endure two or three caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with butterflies.” – Flower

Toy Story 3 Update

I saw it again and loved it as much.

I got to the end and had to fight back tears, but this time I didn’t start bawling.  I came close.  Especially when Andy gives up Woody and walks away from Bonnie’s yard. (Spoiler alert by the way.)

Once again, I recommend you watch it.

The one with the most toys wins…

Ask either of my parents, my cousin, or any of my various roommates and they will tell you that I have trouble throwing things away. Not garbage, I throw that away fine, but stuff I tend to keep as long as I can. I am a hoarder. I blame Toy Story for this.

The first Toy Story came out when I was six years old. Everyone loved it of course. I remember that I saw Toy Story and Space Jam in the same weekend. I don’t remember much about Space Jam, a few scenes, a few jokes, fractured memories that don’t do much for me. Toy Story on the other hand, I never forgot. At the time I remember raving about Space Jam more, but Toy Story left the lasting impression on me. As the years went by it would not be Space Jam that I revisited.

I don’t know why it left such a mark. Perhaps it was because I liked toys so much. I had quite a collection of Spiderman, Batman, X-Men, Superman, etc. action figures which I brought everywhere with me. To the store, to the doctor, to school, to church, and of course on planes. I remember play time being a very imaginative time, full of epic sagas of revenge and honor. The good guys fought bravely and every time they beat the bad guys a new more powerful villain would emerge and the former foes would become allies closer than brothers. This sort of thing went on and on until I ran out of toys and had to use things like pillows and dressers and lava lamps as the more immobile sentient Mother Brain sort of villains. When I moved to the next level I had to start imagining villains. I remember a recurring archetype was the invisible voice/force that tried to destroy the home planets of both heroes and villains, my bed and the spare bed respectively.

I spent hours playing by myself in my room. Sometimes I would move my playscapes to the stairs or my mom’s room or to the kitchen. Usually the change of scenery involved some sort of time warp or wormhole. It was another universe I was in when I played with my toys.

Eventually video games came along and pushed the toys out. I kept my toys around, sure, but they got played with less and less as the years went by. I like to think that my play habits as a child became deeply rooted in my personality. Even when video games took my focus away, I always preferred playing them by myself, and usually games that had some sort of story worth following.

Now I’m twenty and I don’t play with toys anymore. I look back at childhood and as any faithful reader will know I wish I had it back. I wish I could get out my action figures, which I don’t have anymore, and start the saga where it I left it.

Maybe this is why Toy Story resonated with me so much. It was a movie that was about me. Our toys are really just extensions of ourselves after all. It, and its sequels, are movies that touch me so deeply because they are about the conflicts of a boy as played out by his toys.

Don’t believe me? I agree it sounds far fetched and like just the kind of pretentious crap that film critics say (forgive me for referring to myself as a film critic). But I can back it up.

Toy Story concerned Woody’s anxiety with being replaced by Buzz Lightyear. Andy meanwhile, was moving into a new house. Anyone who’s moved knows the difficulty that comes with it. Toy Story 2 was about the Woody’s fear of being destroyed and being shelved, while Andy’s conflict was in the fact that his favorite toy was falling apart. In Toy Story 3, the toys fear for their future and what the next phase of their life will be, while Andy is going to college, getting ready to face the wonders of adulthood and unsure about how his childhood, his toys, fit in to that next phase. These movies aren’t just about the adventures toys have when we aren’t looking – they are about how we live out our troubles through our toys. They are about every child who loved playtime so much that his toys were a part of him. These toys are so loved by Andy that they take on his personality, in its various aspects, even when he isn’t playing with them.

I’ve confessed that I cried at the end of Toy Story 3. I may not have cried if my bond with this franchise hadn’t been so long standing and deep. The first one came out when I was six, the second when I was nine, and the series has been completed in my twentieth year. It is only fitting that Andy has aged at about the same rate as I have. He’s gone through the same changes I have – he’s left childhood behind, and as the third movie makes clear, not without a shade of regret and nostalgia. Sehnsucht is what the Germans call it, I think.

I said I blame Toy Story for my packet nature. Seeing those anthropomorphic toys probably convinced me that everything had a personality and did not want to be thrown out. Even now I have a hard time chucking the junk I’ve bought over the years.

I hope you’ve seen Toy Story and the sequel at least. You’re in the minority if you haven’t. But to those who may think that this third and final iteration is just a chance to get more money, I implore you to soften up and see it. I guarantee you, it has every bit of heart that the first two did and in some way even more. I’m very impressed with this trilogy because it doesn’t have a continuous story line like Pirates or Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, but every movie feels necessary. Why? It’s like life. It’s made up of different unrelated but interconnected episodes and is a record of growth and development. Each sequel feels better than the last without rendering it obsolete. 2 and 3 improve upon their predecessors in every way that a good sequel should.

So if you haven’t, watch Toy Story 3. If you want, I’ll watch it with you.

Alcoholics Unanimous

I just watched The Legend of Drunken Master. It’s been years since I first saw it and the years have done wonders. I revisited it expecting that maybe my love then was just because of my obsession with martial arts. But I still love it as much as I did, in fact more (I still love martial arts movies by the way).

I’ll level with you – this movie could be about absolutely nothing and I would still love it. It has what may be the greatest fight scene in history, along with a lot of the other finalists. It is proof of the fact that there once was a respectable martial artist named Jackie Chan who made phenomenal movies with amazing stunts that he did himself. The recent tide of Hollywood trash (The Tuxedo, Rush Hour 1, 2, & 3, Shanghai Knights, The Medallion) may have made every attempt to diminish and hide this fact but it is undeniable here. Jackie Chan has always involved an element of slapstick in his work and it is often the undoing of his movies, making them feel more ridiculously trite than delightfully stunning. But when he balances it, like he does so marvelously here, the results are awe inspiring.

I have heard that Jackie Chan was inspired by the physical comedy of Buster Keaton. I’m a big fan of Keaton, and I see it. Keaton set up physical gags that utilized every part of his surroundings. Often times, like in One Week, it is almost like the environs are acting out against him, not the other way around. Jackie synthesized martial arts with Keaton’s brand of humor, in itself a kind of one man martial art, and it has become a style all his own.

Take one scene, not really a fight, where he and a friend infiltrate the embassy to steal back the relic that was wrongfully taken by the ambassador. Neither knows the other has snuck in and both are in the uniform of the guards. Jackie is following an official when he sees his cohort coming in disguise, and mistaking him for a guard he performs a lightning fast move by jumping off a wall and through the ceiling vent on the wall opposite. It happens so fast and it seems almost as if the walls are an extension of Chan himself. That’s where Chan differs from Keaton – Keaton was at war with the world around him, while Chan is at one with it, as if the world is coming to his aid when he needs it.

Maybe its a zen thing. I have no idea but it works. It works so well. Chan really is a genius, even if he’s made some terrible movies in the past few years. Zen is all about balance, I think, and balance is what any great martial arts movie is about. This is why Bruce Lee’s movies never quite matched up with Bruce himself – they mostly involved him dispatching man after man with ease. Sure he could do that, but a one-sided fight isn’t all that interesting. Chan strikes a balance here – throughout the course of even the early fights there are moments where Chan is clearly losing. It keeps the tension going. Lee’s movies rarely had that tension because we didn’t ever expect Lee to do anything but win.

The fight scene is an all but lost art. The showdown in Legend of Drunken Master belongs in the Louvre. It exemplifies all that fight scenes should be and can be. It’s long, but I don’t remember looking at my watch or wondering how much longer till it ended.

I’ve talked about Chan’s role so far, but there’s much more to it. This would be a great movie even if there were no fighting. Anita Mui may have been one of the greatest comedic actresses of all time. She is hilarious, and I don’t use that term lightly, and she is simply beautiful, both qualities that shine through even in her few fight scenes. I have a great respect for female martial arts stars. The best ones (Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi, and of course Mui) bring such beauty and elegance to their roles, and fights, that it is easy to forget that what they are doing is beating the crap out of people.

Sadly, Mui doesn’t get a lot of fight scenes, but her screen time isn’t wasted. She plays Jackie’s step mother and she schemes with all the humor and skill of Lucy. If you can watch her without being disarmed you are probably a robot.

Even more sad, Mui died of cervical cancer in 2003. I was vert sad when I learned this. She was one of the most talented actresses I have ever seen. I plan to watch more of her movies.

One last thing. One of the great things about this movie is the brotherhood that develops through the trials that the men go through. In an early scene there is clearly rivalry between Jackie Chan and another working class martial artist. But as the characters are faced with opposition they put aside their petty disputes and stand up to responsibility. The whole movie is about balance. As Jackie Chan’s father says in the movie, “A ship floats in water, and sinks in it too.”

Never said better. Watch it. If you want, I’ll watch it with you.

Holy etc. Batman!

I wasn’t going to write anything about movies tonight but I looked at my list and saw that the next movie was The Dark Knight so I decided against whatever else I had in mind (which was nothing – I spared you a rambling, thank me later).

My history as a fan of Batman is turbulent to say the least.  When I was a child, in elementary school or so, there was a Batman cartoon that aired on whatever channel.  I watched it routinely and loved it.  But as I aged Batman movies got stupid and Spiderman was the “in” hero, so naturally I followed the masses.  The Spiderman movie came at such a time that it eclipsed all other goings-on around me.

Well, Spiderman was done to death and eventually I watched the movie so many times that I hated it.  Then came Batman Begins, and I returned to the old paths after years of delinquency.  What a movie.  Finally someone seemed to understand Batman the way I did.  The darkness, the depth, the everything about it.  It was amazing.

I had no hopes for a future.  Anyone who knows me, hopefully you readers, will know that I am intensely loathing of franchising when it comes to movies.  I don’t mind sequels or trilogies or that sort of thing but I have nothing but contempt for the telescopic ambitions that underlines modern filmmaking.

There was talk, sure, talk about how the Joker was the new villain, how Harvey Dent was in it, how he would probably turn into Two-Face towards the end, opening the door for yet another sequel.  I was less than thrilled.  I love the Joker more than any other villain, and I didn’t want to see a botched Joker anymore than I ever wanted to see Arnold as Mr. Freeze.

I heard Heath Ledger was the new Joker.  Whatever.  I saw him in A Knight’s Tale and some other negligible thoroughfare.  Then I saw the trailer and the rest is box office history.

Batman is more than a comic book character, as is Superman.  Both transcend their birth medium in ways that no others have.  For the most part I find it difficult to really enjoy most Batman comics, largely due to the convoluted nature of the serialized stories.  (The comic book medium has found its highest form of expression in the graphic novel, in my opinion.  Though I appreciate the art and approach of the serialized comic adventure, it is only rarely done with the focus and narrative power of the graphic novel.  I think it is unfair to say that either is more valid than the other, and I can think of several examples of serialized stories that exemplify the medium [Hegre's TinTin comes to mind, as does much of Dickens' work, most of which was published chapter by chapter in literary journals before being published in bound form].  However, the current state of the medium, and sadly the predominant one throughout its history, is characterized by weak, pointless narratives and trite cliches, punctuated by contrived attempts at originality.  Sorry for the tangent.)  But Batman and Superman, like the great myths of societies past, appear in whatever form happens to be the predominant one at the time.  They are not confined to their beginnings.  Indeed, it could be argued that while Spiderman or Wonder Woman or the X-Men are the products of their medium and could not have been borne any other way, the comic genesis of The World’s Finest is largely incidental – comics were the thing.  The Greek myths showed up in poetry and plays, the American myths in comics and movies.

To state it less pretentiously, I consider Batman and Superman American myths.  They are the collective dreams of our society.  They characterize our fears, our ambitions, our weaknesses and our hopes.

Batman to me has always been an imperfect hero.  All the better, because perfect heroes are boring.  We can identify with Batman because we’ve all been wronged – maybe not like Bruce Wayne was, but we know injustice firsthand.  We want justice, not because we are just good people, but because we’ve been wronged and to see justice served is a sort of vicarious victory.  Batman’s flaw is that he operates not because of plain ole goodness but because of a deep thirst for revenge.

I don’t mean to call into question the character of Bruce Wayne/Batman.  What I have described is a lot less despicable than it seems.  Indeed, Batman is so interesting because he tries so hard to strike the balance between what is right and what he wants.  His one boundary is that he will not kill anyone in his quest for justice/revenge.  If he had it his way, I suppose, he would just unload on every one with a record in Gotham.  But he knows what’s right – he knows that while battling with monsters he might just become a monster if he isn’t careful.

Key to the balance he tries to keep is Lieutenant Gordon, a character that Christopher Nolan was wise to give the importance and depth he did in The Dark Knight.  Gordon is Batman’s counterpoint.  He is a man who wants justice simply because it is his duty as a lawman.  He wants to right the city’s wrongs, but he might just be one of only two men who really want to see that happen and he must resort to working with less than pure ingredients.  Many of his men are corrupt.  He turns to Batman when he needs help.  He is just trying to do his job right but he is forced to subvert the system and it is clear that he wishes it weren’t so.  It makes sense that he and Batman become such good of friends – they are men who are going against their nature for a common goal.  They are putting aside what is important to them (for Gordon, the rigidness of the law; for Batman, the desire for total revenge) and trying to achieve the greater good.  Much is made of the relationship between Batman and Alfred, Batman and Harvey Dent, Batman and etc, but little attention is given to the relationship of Batman to Gordon and it is criminal.  Gordon is no minor character.

Getting to the actual movie I’m supposed to be discussing, Gary Oldman does an amazing (as always) job as Jim Gordon.  As with every role he does, not for a moment of his screen time was I thinking, “There’s Gary Oldman!”  He is one of the few actors able to embody a character to the point that he actually seems to be that character.  It helps that he tends to portray characters that I love (Beethoven, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirius Black, Guildenstern, and of course Jim  Gordon), but even in original roles he manages to disappear and let the character appear.

Special praise goes to Christopher Nolan, who has become one of my favorite directors for various reasons.  One, he still uses film.  Two, he dislikes 3D.  Three, he has confirmed that the next Batman movie will be his last wand will complete the story began by the first two.  That is such a refreshing attitude to hear from the man with the third best selling movie of all time.  He could keep churning out crappier and crappier movies, but he’d rather tell a good story and make better and better movies.

The Dark Knight has been called the best comic book movie of all time, and it is, but like I said above, Batman is a myth.  Myths are not bound by media and this is why The Dark Knight even had the potential for greatness.  Sure, in lesser hands it would have stunk, and it has suffered far lesser hands in the past (Joel Schumacher).  But Nolan realized the potential and mined its depths more extensively than any before him.  I truly believe that The Dark Knight stands as the pinnacle of expression of the Batman myth.  The cartoon from my childhood is a close second.

Oh, the Joker doesn’t disappoint either.  But that’s another post for another time.

Something I didn’t say

I don’t think I mentioned this in my essay on My Neighbour Totoro, but I meant to.

One of the things I miss most about childhood is the sense of innocence and wonder that diminished with maturity.  I miss how everything around me was the portal to a world of imagination.  I miss the way playing with toys was often like playing with people. Perhaps that’s why Toy Story connected so well with me.  I’ll discuss that more in my essay in the trilogy, but its true – playing with others is great, but too often what results is a sort of collectivism that extinguishes the identity and individualism that develops when you play by yourself.

After seeing Toy Story 3 I’ve been doing some thinking about childhood and how things change over time.  I think maybe the saddest story in the world is that of the man who loses his grasp on his younger years entirely and I think that maybe I’ve come too close to that point.

I don’t want that to happen and I know it doesn’t have to.

I hope maybe just a little bit I can get some of what I lost from the children I work with.  I think I have somewhat.  And I hope I can pass something on to them.  I don’t know what I have worth passing on, but maybe just the assurance that growing up isn’t everything its cracked up to be.

Maybe I’m just losing it.  Who knows.

A word on transportation

Strangest thing happened.

I was surfing around the internet and came across this.  Click that link and read it before you go any further because it is crucial.

I read that and it moved me to say the least because John Hughes has long been one of my favorite filmmakers.  This woman’s account of her correspondence with John Hughes sparked a number of emotions in me, not the least of which was jealousy.

Reading this reminded me of my list of my favorite movies and I thought, “forget whatever movie is next on the list, I’m writing about a John Hughes movie.”  So I went to my blog, logged in and went to my old posts to see what movie I would be preempting.

If you would like to, you can return to that post now and see what I saw.  That’s right – the next movie on my list was Planes, Trains and Automobiles, directed by none other than John Hughes.  I was just a bit shocked.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles is maybe my favorite John Hughes film.  I says maybe because its hard for me to pick between his masterpieces.  Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Uncle Buck, She’s Having A Baby (which I consider a masterpiece no matter what anyone says) and The Breakfast Club.  All are perfect and transcend the genres and stereotypes associated with them.

Why this one then?  Its not necessarily better then the others, like I said, but it has everything I like most about John Hughes, so talking about this movie makes it easier for me to talk about the man behind it.

John Hughes was director who changed the way movies were made.  That gets said about alot of directors (like George Lucas) and often it isn’t true (George Lucas), but Hughes deserves the praise.  His movies, all of them comedies of some sort, are hard to classify.  Take Ferris Bueller for example.  Its a comedy, sure, but how much of the humor comes from actual jokes?  How many comedies have montages in art museums?  That sequence doesn’t even really provide any laughs.  A lesser director would have cut it, but Hughes draws our attention to it.  Another part of the movie contains a very tense bit of frustration from Ferris’s friend Cameron.  Once again, not all that funny, but Hughes put it there because it is the logical conclusion of the events leading up to it.  His characters are believable because he doesn’t use them as vehicles for laughs.  We can empathize with people who get frustrated, people who get depressed.

And that is what separates Hughes from his peers – he doesn’t make comedies, he makes movies about people, movies about life.  Now people, as it turns out, are very often funny, especially when they aren’t trying to be, and life is often a lot like a comedy.  But anyone living it can tell you that as often as life is funny it is sad, confusing, frustrating, annoying, difficult, and bittersweet.  Sometimes it is a blend of these things, but we come to a movie, whatever genre it is, knowing how life is.  John Hughes movies have struck a chord with so many people because he doesn’t hesitate to show any of those other things listed.  And he blends them well too.

Take a scene in PT&A when Steve Martin finally loses his temper with John Candy.  He tells him off in grand fashion, insulting every aspect of Candy’s character down to his job.  Candy takes it in stride, refuses to strike back and from his response it is clear that Martin isn’t the first person to launch this attack.  He’s been hurt before, and its clear that he’s built up an emotional front to deal with this sort of rejection.

Pretty heavy stuff for a comedy, a holiday comedy at that.  And it isn’t done in a kitsch sort of way to soften the emotional impact.  But its this and other laughless moments that make the humor so much more potent.  If life were all fun and games then we’d probably get bored and even want to be depressed.  The hard times are what make the good times good.  So with life, so with Hughes – he balances the emotions and trials of life with the funny times so that we have characters we can empathize with, not just characters we can laugh at.

But aside from all that, PT&A is a hilarious movie.  One thing I like about the humor of Hughes is that it rarely has to do with jokes because life isn’t one big setup for a punchline.  Its the sort of natural humor that comes from watching old home videos.  Sometimes the funniest moments aren’t even really that funny.  The situations, the reactions, the strange behaviours – these are the things that really make life funny, and Hughes mines each for their comic potential.

Most of all, John Hughes makes movies about people trying to make the best out of things and the fear of failure.  His are characters that often have genuinely good reasons for their shortcomings.  One of the most refreshing aspects of PT&A, and proof that even the smallest of Hughes’s characters weren’t flat, is that Steve Martin’s family doesn’t get upset with him for something he couldn’t control.  Every other movie I’ve seen with the “father unable to attend important event” scenario features a wife and kids that are ready to put the dad through heck because he isn’t God.  But in PT&A they don’t make him feel guilty for what he didn’t do, yet guilt still creeps up on Martin.  Perhaps its because he knows he doesn’t want to be there as much as they want him.  Maybe its because he knows he doesn’t deserve such understanding.  Emotions are complex and Hughes refuses to simplify them.

I know this has been a bit scattered, but I’ve tried to be extemporaneous.  Planes, Trains and Automobiles is a movie that cuts deep and gets sentimental without getting sappy.

As always, if you’d like I’ll watch it with you.

Visions and revisions.

I need to make a minor revision to my list of my favorite movies because of something I saw today.

That something was Toy Story 3.

I will say no more about it other than that it made me cry and will likely make anyone emotional if the first two movies were as big a part of their childhood as they were of mine.

My revision is to add the Toy Story Trilogy as one of my favorite movies.  They’ve all been important to me and to leave any one of them off would be criminal.

A cat-bus is a creature in your neighborhood.

The review I wrote of Badlands was written in one take, and I realized right away that I needed to think about it more before committing words to paper… or screen or whatever. I wrote the Seven Samurai review in three sittings, revising everything written up until that point each time with a final once-over before publishing it. I am glad I did that.

This one I’m doing in one go. Why? Because of all the films I’ve seen, none has made an impression as distinct as My Neighbor Totoro.

I would like to mention here that there are many problems with the way America chooses to entertain children, but two jump out at me when I watch this movie. Both have to do with delusions. One, Americans are fine giving their kids the same formulas over and over again. I think maybe it started when women stopped breast feeding – more formulas to fill the gap between infancy and science class! Or perhaps they think that it somehow constitutes a form of education, showing their kids endless variations of the same plot set in a different century (or a different version of the twentieth century) with a different humanoid animal hero in the same old story (though the song and dance went out with traditional animation). I’m surprised that our kids (or even my generation) haven’t grown up thinking that everything they come up against is the work of some villain that only wants to thwart their happiness (death is out of the question in these pictures), or even worse – their comfort! I am not against the good v. evil scenario, but it is just one scenario of many.

Problem two is this – Americans seem to be fine with the fact that the entertainment they offer to their children is devoid of any real sense of humanity or reality. This is tightly connected to the last problem – the good v evil precedent doesn’t work in most of the real situations of life. Most problems in children’s movies – in movies – are the work of some evil person or force beyond the control of the protagonist. Most of the problems we deal with are our own faults, the results of bad choices and patterns of irresponsible behavior. Even when we are faced with problem that we genuinely couldn’t have controlled, there is usually little good we can do but grin and bear it, to face things with courage (“grace under pressure,” -Hemingway).

Not only that, but things happen, to… people! People who were trying to do nothing more special than live their lives.

And stories, the kind we make up, have beginnings and ends only so we don’t throw things at the storytellers. Any good storyteller is a student of life and will tell you that life has a very definite beginning and end and they are the least important parts. The stories of our lives spring up and fizzle out with little fanfare.

I could rant on and on and on for pages on my other complaints with American pediamusement. Who decided realism was a no-no for children? Why are medieval times suspiciously similar to modern times? Maybe the biggest question I have is why do the characters in these movies seem so emotionally detached? Are we trying to teach our children how best to function in a harsh unloving society?

And there I go ranting. But I didn’t write this to rant, because the movie I’m talking about doesn’t suffer from any of these problems.

Hayao Miyazaki, the director, has been called “the Japanese Walt Disney”. I prefer “The Anti-Walt” because he makes movies that are like pitch pipes – they show how far out of tune everything else is.

Many adjectives could describe the visions of Miyazaki – distilled, crystallized, zen – but the experience does not translate well into any language. He deals not with ideas, but with emotions and most importantly, with people. It has been said that Shakespeare was so great because he wrote characters more real and full than most actual people. Maybe Miyazaki should be called “Shakespeare the Animator”.

The two main characters are two young girls whose mother is sick. They move to the countryside and meet a large creature called a Totoro – a friendly catlike giant that inhabits a magical tree near their house. There are also some small Totoro that follow the big one around. And a bus that is also a cat.

This is the only film – the only thing – I’ve seen that captures the feeling of childlike wonder. Of all the things we lose to maturity I think none is more precious than that, the sense of awe at the most simple and the vision which sees in the most commonplace the most wonderful.

I probably haven’t been clear and I don’t think I can. This is the only movie that I can watch with laughter and then cry thinking about it. It connects the willing viewer to a part of him or herself that has been long severed. And for children, it gives them someone they can actually relate with. Characters who are still children, characters who haven’t grown up yet.

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen it. Plenty, but never too many.

As always, if you want I’ll watch it with you.

The greatest band of all time

The first time I saw Seven Samurai, I was either in the tenth or eleventh grade. I can’t remember which, but either one is just as likely because it was in that period of my life that I began to have an interest in foreign films, in particular Japanese ones, and more specifically the films of Akira Kurosawa.

My first exposure to Kurosawa was in my seventh grade Japanese class. My teacher presented him as the “sensei” of all directors, and we watched Sanjuro. I doubted that anyone could be Kubrick’s sensei. Having seen many of his movies since, I do not disagree with her judgment.

Seven Samurai is a film that needs to be seen to be understood. This is true of any great film, but perhaps more true of this masterpiece than any. Words cannot do it justice.

Don’t believe me? Listen: Seven Samurai is about a village of farmers in feudal Japan who have an annual problem – a gang of thieves comes through just after harvest time every year and demands to be fed for “protection.” This leaves the village impoverished and the farmers decide to do something about it. One of the villagers journeys into a nearby town to recruit samurai to fight the thieves. As you can imagine, they find seven – actually six and one wannabe drunk, but he’s got a sword, so its seven. Then they train, and later they fight.

If you listened closely you might recognize this plot from The Magnificent Seven, and may also see parts of it in A Bug’s Life. Both were based on Seven Samurai, the former more explicitly, and elements of it have popped up all over the place. The story is timeless in its simplicity.

But doubts probably arise as to how this description accounts for nearly four hours of film. Those accustomed to more modern thrillers and action flicks, which often involve more plot twists than lines of dialogue, may balk at a movie so monstrous in length that involves so “little.”

But I made a disclaimer – seeing is believing. What makes Seven Samurai great is so much more than its story. The actors do an amazing job, from the seven distinct samurai to the peasants who have view their protectors as a missed blessing. Toshiro Mifune, who is in most of Kurosawa’s movies in a lead role, is content to share the stage here as the drunk who wishes nothing more than to be a samurai. Takashi Shimura plays the stoic leader who must prepare these misfits, and the farmers as well, for the battle of a lifetime.

The cinematography, as in all of Kurosawa’s movies, is breathtaking, and sets the template for much of what would become standard practice in the industry when it comes to action sequences.

The subplots, which develop the characters more fully, never feel like tangents, but extensions of the movie’s reality. The feel as vital as any of the training sequences or even the final battle. Lesser directors, even great ones, might have attempted the same sort of scale and depth and ended up shallow and tedious. Kurosawa achieves something very balanced yet spontaneous. Perhaps it is zen or wu or whatever. I don’t know but it is amazing.

But no one of these things makes the movies great. The magic is that they all make it great. Kurosawa understood that a movie’s greatness depended on the synergy of its parts – this same synergy can be found in much of his work.

Seven Samurai is a pillar of the action genre, but its resonance with me has little to do with that aspect. It is a portrait of men fighting, none for the same reason, but all because they feel it is their duty. Along the way they forge powerful relationships and learn things about themselves and the world around them.

Reading over that last paragraph I realize that it sounds like the cliche description of a feel good movie that nobody want to see. My powers of description are no match for Kurosawa’s powers as a filmmaker. I would hardly call Seven Samurai a feel good movie, though it does affirm the possibility of humanity through dark times. It is a meditative movie, one which invites us to consider the best that is possible and respect the cost of that outcome.

Plus, the battles are just awesome.

I have seen it twice from beginning to end. I will watch it with you if you want to see it, and i recommend that you do.