i really loved it, i'm glad it spent so much time in the buildup getting you familiar with the situation and the cast, it became almost like i had a personal stake in the protection of the village, not just that i was an observer

i was reading some stuff online and one dude was talking about how he thought the showdown portion of the movie was meandering and unfocused and choppy, and seriously fuck that? i'm honestly glad it didn't turn into a huge protected half-the-movie battle sequence, it was never about the battle, it was about exploring the kinds of people it takes to survive and thrive in these conditions. we wouldn't have gotten that whole speech from drunken mcsquatty samurai halfway through about how they weren't perfect people, but they did what they needed to scrape by and the samurai were implicit in making them that way, if it was just going to end up with a big battle being the whole reason the film existed.

that last scene KILLED me. the villagers celebrating (and yo i loved how they turned the "danger coming, stalker" drumbeat motif into their celebration song) while the few remaining samurai looked up the hill at the graves? holy shit man, kill me now. i kinda wish they'd just stopped there instead of banging the point home with the "we're the losers here" line.

really good sound design? i dont know it just had a really good sense of presence to the sound. felt like a really legitimate setting all throughout.

back on the "you do what you have to" thing, what this drove home for me that a lot of other movies haven't in my experience is just how well the movie drove home that the things you have to do to survive shape your way of life and your approach to life. not just in terms of lifestyle, about how much of a crisis it was for them to lose food and how beat up their houses were and everything, but even the way people held themselves - the villagers all had a very loose posture, like everyone was slouching all the time or wincing away from a blow or about to drop to the ground, but all the samurai had very upright postures, very dignified, but in a kind of casual way that said they were accustomed to it. that even carried through a bit to the samurai - the squatty laughy one had a very different demeanor than the rest of the samurai but then we find out he was born a farmer, and his demeanor makes more sense.

excited to watch more kurosawa in the future