The Magnificent Seven

April 10, 2019

Inspiration. Hope. Joy.

These three words only begin to capture the rapture I feel every time I listen to the theme song from The Magnificent Seven. Yesterday I happened to stumble across the soaring music of Elmer Bernstein’s movie score on YouTube, after not hearing the instrumental or seeing the movie for awhile. Wow. The gloriously uplifting tune makes me want to saddle up and ride to the rescue of downtrodden people, whether they want to be rescued by me or not. The powerful music is energetic, masculine, and very, very American: optimistic, and evocative of our wide open spaces.

Perhaps I love the film score and the movie in part because they are from a simpler time. When the movie was released in October of 1960, I was eight years old, and the country was about to elect a young president who would call for a New Frontier of social reforms and space exploration. The stars of the film were at the beginning of their storied careers: Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, James Coburn, and Eli Wallach. I love the story, inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 film The Seven Samurai, of seven misfits who for different reasons decide to work together to defend a little Mexican village against a large group of bandits.

The seven gunslingers were rugged individuals in the Old West who were persuaded by Yul Brynner’s character to rise above their selfish interests to help the bullied farmers stand up to the cutthroats who were tyrannizing them. Whatever their original motivations, the seven became heroic in their protection of the vulnerable peasants.

Even as a boy I knew that westerns romanticized the dark side of that time and place in American history. I was especially aware of our mistreatment of the Indians. But then, as now, I needed to believe in the altruism represented by the seven fighters. I wanted to know that people could transcend their self-centered behavior to serve a higher ideal. And the dramatic excitement of the seven adventurers was beautifully captured by the epic scale of the movie’s theme song, which somehow managed to evoke the courage of the seven as well as the endless possibilities and beauty of the western landscape.

The Magnificent Seven movie and film score offer a welcome antidote to our current national and international moods of pessimism and divisiveness. I personally need the goosebumps and inspirational chills I get every time I hear that music. Sometimes I feel sad and disappointed that I haven’t lived up to the idealism inspired by the film and its anthem, but I’m still hopeful that some day, or some lifetime, I will. I believe that we all have a yearning deep inside us to serve others and serve the greater good. And in this era of rapid climate change and social turmoil, we need such enthusiasm and passion, such hope and inspiration, to rescue ourselves and give ourselves the joy that is rightfully ours.