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context: movies > sources
BFI Film Classics: Seven Samurai by Joan Mellen
On another page here, I'm fairly negative about the same author's book in this series on In The Realm Of The Senses. This is far better. It does have the odd poor moment, notably a pointless and rather misguided attack on The Magnificent Seven, most of it amounting to "this is not the same kind of film at all!" which is too obvious to be worth saying. Nonetheless, it avoids the traps that many critics fall into, that of trying to cast a modern rightist or leftist meaning onto the film. It's a movie that loves its samurai at the same time as knowing they are becoming obsolete, a film that examines and dramatises a turning point in Japanese history without entirely telling us what to think about these things. Mellen is excellent on the many ways this is all shown in the movie, its nuances and implications. I would have liked a little more formal discussion, but this is a very good book.