A
very nice poster
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A
company of samurai warriors find their social structure destroyed
when they recruit a young, beautiful boy into their midst. His enigmatic
presence and beauty spark jealousy, intrigue and murder. Quite different
from many other samurai pictures I've seen in that the emotion is
more to the front and frank. I would have expected the opposite. Rather,
the hidden nature is reserved for the boy, whose purpose isn't quite
clear until the end of the film.
For a chamber piece, it's gloriously photographed. The lighting
is notably well staged and the photography is crisp (HiDef video?).
The intertitles that break apart each section of the film are a
bit much, some of which describe the action to come like a play,
but it does lend a certain formalism into the tone that works.
An
unwelcome advance.
It stars the great Takeshi
Kitano as one of the commanders of the unit, who tries to put
a lid on the uproar in his troop but also finds himself entranced
by the boy. I liked his performance here quite a lot better than
the smirking cartoonish gangster he played in "Brother", mostly
because he voices his thoughts openly and his normally blank reaction
expression is placed in a more direct reference to a previous scene.
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Also,
some nice samurai swordsmanship is filmed fluidly, from a distance,
both in the training duels and in the quick action sequences in
the outside scenes.
It's
nice also to see the homoeroticism in the film not played up as
it would in conservative North American film (played for scandal)
but rather stated matter-of-factly. Some characters do sneer at
the display, but the love affairs are accepted by all around except
for the trouble they cause within the membership.
Available
on DVD
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