Difficulty Ranking: 3
Transcript / Subs: unknown
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055630/
watchitwatchitwatchit!!!
This film was recommended to me as Akira Kurosawa's best samurai film. I don't know if that's true, as i haven't watched any of his others yet. But this film is definately one of those great, defining moments of film history!! If you've watched some westerns, probably you'll recognise the storyline, because it's a classic. Anyway, it's definately the best film i've seen in a while!! and... i've never really been into westerns or samurai stuff at all. In fact, i put off watching it for a while, even though i expected it would be good, because it's a samurai film. I shouldn't have... やっぱり、サムライはカッコイイ！
Anyway, the hero Samurai, with somewhat dubious morality, hates idiots and so decides to play the idiots of the town against each other so the town can start again from new. The film is really really funny in a ton of places!!! Definately recommended!
The language is hard in a lot of places... there were lots of things i couldn't catch, mumbly speaking, fast speaking, and older contractions. Basically, some samurai talk combined with speech representative of the time it was made i imagine... i'm really not too sure. I watched it with my family, so i had english subtitles...
Hmm, I've been putting off watching samurai/時代劇 stuff for a while since I figured there would be a lot of old Japanese phrases and that I would never pick up even the gist of the story like I can with most movies. Do you think the movie would still be enjoyable to someone who doesn't have too much experience with old style Japanese?
ReplyDeleteAlthough I just searched and found it on Veoh subbed, so I guess I could always watch it with subs first, and then watch it a second time with something blocking the subtitles...
yes, it would definately be interesting, even when you can't understand!!!
ReplyDeletethe story is fairly simple, and a lot of the humour is in the acting rather than the language itself. You should be able to pick up what's going on even if you couldn't understand anything of the language at all :) (though there will definately be some stuff you can pick up).
Though, unless you know where to find Japanese subs for it, it's probably worth watching with english subs too, as it makes it much easier to understand the japanese that way, and can end up as good practise!
Hmm, then I guess I'll watch it! After I attempted to watch Rashomon this one time, Samurai movies have always kind of scared me off (besides the Zatoichi films, those are just awesome), but this one looks really funny, so I'll give it a try.
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