Movie Presentation Spirited Away vs Seven Samurai By: Cyrus Love

Individual Information  Spirited Away: Made in 2001, Japan, directed by Hayao Miyazaki and Kirk Wise, animated by Hayao Miyazaki, main actor Rumi Hiiragi (Main Character in movie), Japanese and English.  Seven Samurai: Made in1954, Japan, directed by Akira Kurosawa, directed by Akira Kurosawa, Music and Cinematics by Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni, Actors Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima, Isao Kimura, Daisuke Kat ō, Seiji Miyaguchi, Yoshio Inaba. (The Seven Samurai). Only originally in Japanese.

Individual Summary  Spirited Away: A young girl (Chihiro) and her family have to move to a suburban area and she doesn’t want to, when she gets there it turns out the land is ruled by evil gods devils and demons and they are all over, her parents get caught in a trap and are turned into pigs who now are at a bathhouse that is owned by an evil witch which was who cursed Chihiro’s parents. Chichiro meets this boy, Haku, who says he can help save her and her family and escape back into the real world, and the movie is how they do just that

Individual Summary  Seven Samurai: Mainly what happens is there are a bunch of bad guy bandits goin’ around and raiding the villages, they are about to raid another village, but decide to wait and go after the harvest, one of the villagers hears they will be attacked soon, and go out looking for guardians, for samurai. Most shun the villagers, but eventually they find an old master and eventually recruit 7 samurai, they all have talents and personalities. They build many defenses for the village and protect it in any way they can. Eventually the bandits attack, loosing lots from all the defenses because they didn’t think the villagers would put up a fight. And eventually they do fight, and the samurai fight and stuff. The chief bandit has muskets or something and captures some women from the village, 4 of the samurai die fighting or in other ways, some by musket shot from the chief bandit, and then the 3 remaining samurai watch the village grow and prosper, and they feel very happy with themselves.

Differences  The main reason I chose two movies was to compare and contrast because these two kinds of movies both display interesting examples of the Japanese Culture and filmmaking.  First off Spirited Away is an animated movie, which is very modern and made a few years ago, it consists of all the modern folklore and heritage including the demons and spirits that are sort of like a superstition.  The movie Seven Samurai is an amazing ancient style movie of the Samurai, and Ronin, master swordfighters of an almost lost art, it’s a very powerful and wise movie in the sense that all the Samurai are wise and all have their special talents and have to work together and be a team.

Differences Cont.  These movies highly contrast mainly because of the huge generation gap. Which I think is completely dependent on what movies are made, there are no Samurai Wars in Japan right now, so there are not going to be many movies about the Samurai. Unlike 60 years ago when that was highly demanded just because at that time that’s what the people wanted. Now we have the modern adaptation of things like Spirited Away, the animation genre. They both show very valuble aspects of life and culture, but two different kinds, mainly for two different cultures.

Movie Links: Trailers: Spirited Away: Seven Samurai: Movie: Spirited Away: Seven Samurai: (none)