#6 - Seven Samurai

I crossed some sort of invisible line when I was 16. I had moved to a new town about two weeks before school started and didn't really know anyone, so I had to wait a little while before I really made new friends. High school was kind of a joke, so I had a ton of time after school to kill. I spent that first winter clearing out the local video store 3 tapes at a time. You know that person in your building that has too many cats and wears cat sweaters that you see lugging 50 pound bags of meow mix into the elevator. Well I was that person except, you know, movies instead of cats. Things turned around for me of course, even though I had shoulder length hair that flipped out like Judy Jetson, but the video store in town was always a comfortable place for me. And it was there, when I was feeling a little adventurous, that I picked up Seven Samurai. 3.5 hours long, in Japanese with English subtitles. I was skeptical. I just figured that movies made in different countries would be unintelligible, that there would be other barriers besides language. I was wrong. I was also lucky. I imagine if I had picked up Solaris I wouldn't have fallen in love with foreign films so quickly. Sometimes the right film comes to you at the right time.

This was the perfect gateway drug for sixteen year old Don Jacobson. I loved how it took its time to introduce me to the characters. I laughed my ass off at Kikuchiyo's introduction and the way he was slowly introduced into the group. I marveled at the way the action and the tension built once we finally came to the village the samurai were sent to protect. I was blown away.

The twenty-nine year old Don Jacobson is still blown away. Film classes and books have allowed me to further appreciate how carefully constructed it is, and how different it is from other Japanese features at the same time. How the action is all about precise camera movement and editing. At the same time it transports me back to being that sixteen year old in the basement, smiling and marveling at something he'd never seen before. From that day on, it was rare to see me leave the video store without some kind of foreign film under my arm. Many of them were as stupid as their American counterparts, but they laid the groundwork for my discovery of countless others, three of which are on this list.

I have a sixteen year old brother now. I think I'll bring Seven Samurai next time I see him.

R.I.P. DFW

A friend of mine jokes occasionally that I only really like 5 novels. If that were really true, it would only be because Infinite Jest ruined my expectations forever. It taught me that I didn't need to fully understand a novel to engage with it. It challenged me to become smarter, it made me look up words and re-read sentences. I feel like to some degree the experience taught me how to read. His other novel, his short fiction, and his journalistic work are all similarly rewarding.

A great loss.