Okay, on facebook, an old blog friend, Jeri, has tasked me to post one poster a day of a movie that influenced me for 10 days. I don't know if I can do it for 10 days, but I will try. Anyway, any film will influence me one way or another and it's hard to choose ten that have influenced me "the most." As I was pondering my choices, I got an email from Sierra Humes, a student in my class this summer who said she continues to think about some of the movies we saw more than a month after class ended. For this teacher, it is hard to think something more satisfying than the idea that students are still "influenced" by a course I taught. So I've decided to post Japanese films I screened this past summer. #1: The first J-film I ever saw in a class as an undergraduate and the first I ever showed in a class I was teaching was "Seven Samurai". Yes, a bit dated and unoriginal, but it remains a classic. It is still one of the highest-rated action films on Rotten Tomato of all action films, not just J-films. And while it is fun to watch--Toshiro Mifune's Kikuchiyo is certainly a treat--it is instructive as well. It depicts class separation of the Edo period: Young Katsushiro desperately wants to be with the peasant Shino, but she knows that she must remain with her kind. Kikuchiyo born a peasant, wants desperately to be a samurai, and in a way he does, but at what cost? (Watch the film.) It is also a film reflective of the time it was produced. Kurosawa often incorporated his own view of society, and the seven samurai--ronin, masterless samurai looking for purpose in the Edo period--may be a reflection of those soldiers wandering back home from WWII trying to find their way in a rebuilding Japan of the 1950s.
