Overcoming the ‘one inch tall barrier of subtitles’ with Akira Kurosawa

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

This review contains spoilers.

Some of modern Hollywood’s most popular tropes originate across an ocean.

Picture this: A group of idiosyncratic heroes is recruited to serve a noble cause. Their leader, the protagonist of the film, convinces reluctant characters to join his team. Despite their differences, the team learns to work together over the course of the film, culminating in a final battle where the audience has become invested enough in the characters that deaths truly sting.

What action movie could this summary describe? Plenty. So many that this “assembling the team” trope has become cliché.

But the film that created this trope is “Seven Samurai” (1953) by Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) — a leading director of the postwar Japanese film boom and indisputably among the most influential directors in cinema history.

It’s impossible to watch “Seven Samurai,” a three-hour epic about 16th-century Japanese villagers who hire samurai to defend them from bandits, without recognizing its enduring influence. 

While the action sequences are well-shot and edited, the characters are the true reason to watch the film. Action requires stakes, and “Seven Samurai” dedicates its first two hours to developing the seven samurai and villagers alike. For me, the most memorable aspects of the movie weren’t the action sequences — which, paradoxically, is why “Seven Samurai” is such an excellent action film.

My favorite scenes in the film involve Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune), the seventh member of the team who isn’t actually from a samurai family. His character arc from wannabe hero to actual hero is another that has become an action movie trope. 

When the samurai debate why they are defending villagers (a recurring theme in the film, as they have agreed to do so pro bono), Kikuchiyo points out that samurai have caused villagers harm, too. Watching action heroes seriously debate the moral underpinnings of their mission, I understood why “Seven Samurai” is as compelling today as it was 72 years ago — it firmly grounds its action in character development. 

What makes a hero? Should a samurai sacrifice his life for a lowly villager? The thematic stakes of “Seven Samurai” elevate it from merely a well-shot action flick to a profound work of art.

Kurosawa’s work spans far more than “Seven Samurai.” While he directed too many famous and excellent films to list in a single article, two other examples highlight the wide range of his work.

You might recognize “Rashomon” (1950) for its eponymous effect — in this film, Kurosawa originated the plot device of retelling the same story multiple times from someone else’s perspective and leaving the truth ambiguous. Its influence is reflected in countless subsequent works such as Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” (2019), in which each character recounts the night of a murder from their own contradicting points of view. Like “Seven Samurai,” “Rashomon” raises questions that transcend the specific plot, though “Rashomon’s” themes are more inward-facing: Who are we as humans if subjectivity always complicates truth?

Kurosawa’s films aren’t all period pieces. “Ikiru” (1952), whose title means “to live,” features a Tokyo government bureaucrat, Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura), who embarks on a quest to find meaning in his life for the first time after receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis. While this premise has appeared in art before and since 1952, I appreciate the film’s lack of clichés — Watanabe dies with a significant amount of time left in the film, allowing for a clever plot where, at his funeral, his coworkers debate his sudden change in disposition. 

As the viewer, we are invited to participate in the conversation, as we are equally unsure of what changed in Watanabe as his coworkers. Furthemore, the audience relies on the coworkers’ recounting of the story to reconstruct the last weeks of Watanabe’s life, most of which is never directly shown on screen.

It’s telling that the title of the movie is “To Live,” compared to the title of the short story that partially inspired it, Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.” It takes the prospect of his imminent death for Watanabe to realize that he hasn’t lived — to realize that despite decades as a bureaucrat, he has accomplished nothing significant in his life. 

As a viewer, watching Watanabe is a wake-up call. I don’t want to end up like him, but that’s easier said than done. Do I know what it means to live? Do I feel that I’ve accomplished something significant in my life? How long, how much experimentation, would it take for me to be sure? But again, “Ikiru” affirms life — Watanabe dies satisfied.

These examples are just a glimpse of the diversity — and analytic depth — of Kurosawa’s work.

When “Parasite” won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2020, the film’s director, Bong Joon-ho, encouraged viewers to “overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles” and explore movies beyond Hollywood. 

I strive to watch foreign-language films not to pretentiously present myself as “cultured” but rather to better understand film overall. Hollywood — classic and contemporary — is just one way to write, edit, film and score a story.

Movies haven’t existed for much more than a century, and directors from around the world have always watched each others’ work. To thoughtfully engage in the conversation of cinema, it’s helpful to sample widely. Don’t worry about “best film” lists or Rotten Tomatoes scores — pick a movie whose premise you find interesting. Don’t force yourself to watch a movie that bores you, but don’t give up too early either (I always watch the first 45 minutes). 

Every human culture — and films from every human culture — grapples with questions of heroism, subjectivity and mortality. Perhaps the best reason to watch more foreign-language films is to explore another approach to these universal questions. You might just discover some new favorites, like I have.

You can watch “Seven Samurai,” “Rashomon,” “Ikiru” and most of Kurosawa’s other films on Kanopy (available for free with your SUNet ID).

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