Les: 7 Samurai

The film is a funeral. The samurai fight brilliantly, win the battle, and then disappear. They have no land. No master. No future. The farmers, whom they despise and pity, inherit the earth because they are useful . They grow food.

This is not humility. It is an epitaph.

This is the historical reality of Sengoku period Japan. The samurai were rendered irrelevant by firearms (introduced by the Portuguese in 1543) and then by the long peace of the Tokugawa shogunate. Les 7 Samouraï is set in the late 16th century—the very moment the sword lost its monopoly on violence. les 7 samurai

And that is why, 70 years later, we are still watching those seven men walk into the rain. We are mourning not their deaths, but the beautiful, futile nobility of their choice. The film is a funeral