Seven Samurai

The romance was there to show that the samurai and the peasants really weren't supposed to mingle much at all. It hammers in the theme that the normal people were at the mercy of the fighting men, even the "good guys" that protected them out of good will. Even though the samurai lad sullies the daughter, out of "love", the villagers can't do shit against him.

The camera work is superb, but Seven Samurai hammered a bunch of cool points 15 years before
Poor Nip directors, no matter what they do, the shadow of Kurosawa, even in its trivial technical points, is too damn big to surpass
No wonder they all quitted and went to do anime instead, only Miike and Kitano dared, and they now do live action remakes

I think Andrei Rublev covers a more complex theme than Seven Samurai. Seven Samurai is just an action drama in vein of spaghetti western films. Andrei Rublev is about the psychological turmoil of an artist during the harshest condition of his surroundings and a search of spiritual meaning of his art. While other religious painters lived in a vacuum, Rublev tried to absorb and process all the ills of his world into a vision. Both have great cinematography, but Andrei Rublev is a lot more profound.

The point of the love subplot was to illustrate the huge gap between the samurai class and the peasant class, which was the central theme of the movie, rather than exist purely as a typical romance subplot.

While I agree that Rublev is a better film(and probably the best period film ever made for that matter), it probably wouldn't have existed without the influence of Seven Samurai, Ugetsu Monogatari, and The Seventh Seal. Tarkovsky himself admitted so in Sculpting in Time, IIRC.

I was thinking about how stalker is probably better in some ways than seven samurai today, deeper lore anyway.

Interesting, it really is a cold and mostly bitter ending, what with the great men that died protecting people that probably don't give a shit about them, that's the impression I got anyway that the villagers had basically used them. Although losing like 3 in the last 20 mins also sucked.

Could you expand on this please, I felt that the 7th samurai to join the mad bastard kinda bridged the gap between the two groups.

As the bald samurai guy said, the villagers won when most of the warriors died and the three stragglers fucked off from their life. Doing the right thing cost the samurai a lot which explains why other warriors, like the bandits or the village's samurai official that is only mentioned off-handedly, weren't benevolent even though they weren't depicted as straight evil either. The hard times meant everyone had to fight for survival, even if they couldn't.

It's continuation of the theme that ability for violence gives freedom, which is pretty common and heavily featured in old west and wandering knight stories. As there is no way he would actually return to picking rice under the yoke, Mifune's character does the opposite of bridging the two classes. His ability to fight means he has freedom, freedom which gives the samurai the ability to lay peasants' daughters without repercussions, the freedom to take food from starving villagers and distribute it back for good will, freedom to go anywhere and fight and die for causes other than mere survival.

Nips may be a bunch of crazy cunts but they do have this honor thing figured out.
I suppose what you're telling me really says a lot for the character of the samurai to put their lives on the line even though they had the freedom to choose not to.

You should check out Ran then. No love subplot except betrayal.

Typical jap honour involved doing things because duty demanded it and there really wasn't a choice in the first place. I don't think they even had a concept of chivalric, fundamentally altruistic, heroics before gaijin media forced it on them.

I still don't think they have, which is why they've been so fucked in the head since they lost WW2 and weren't wiped out like their honoor would demand.

Which Kurosawa film should I see next, Yojimbo or Throne of Blood?

That's retarded, but let's say it was the viable way
When Hirohito went full goy and said he was no longer the cool kid, along with surrendering (the main strike), the nips got mad as fuck because they realized all the efforts in the name of him, such as kamikaze waves and fighting even when given fair clemency, were in vain
Then they realized their prime object to follow the rules didn't follow the rules himself, they decided to quit and live on. That's the post-war period, they realized there was nothing after, nothing to stand by, practically a moral anarchy, moreso than before in the rural areas.
God knows how they managed to control their minds and manners, but those post-war years are still seen in media as rampant cunt behaviour such as corruption, murder for shoes, all-out asshole from the 50's. Even the Yakuza had their stories (Graveyard of Honor is maybe the most famous example)

Kurosawa also portrayed this era very decently, Stray Dog refers somewhat to this code contrast with a piece of shit of a criminal against an old school rookie cop, then you have the one where Mifune gets lung aids, this movie also refers to a rule-less yakuza who in the end abides by the rules he learned as youth
Without going B&W morality, unlike the early american westerns, which portray stuff very extremely. Something that the spaguetti western (or overall the revisionist western genre) destroyed, making the heroes as bad as the criminals, and sometimes the villains as decent as the old heroes

Yojimbo is a must
Throne of Blood should be taken much later like wine

Yojimbo. Rashamon and Ikiru are also essential.

Kurosawa is action movie kino.