Set during Japan's Shogun era, this film looks at life in a samurai compound where young warriors are trained in swordfighting. A number of interpersonal conflicts are brewing in the training room, all centering around a handsome young samurai named Sozaburo Kano. The school's stern master can choose to intervene, or to let Kano decide his own path.
08 Mar Taboo (1999)
Beautiful Face
“Realm of the Senses” was an insidiously effective film: it tricked us into an obsession over sex with its frank and open explicitness. Thus, we became part of the story about sexual obsession.
This does something similar, in a masterpiece of sorts in audience manipulation. The story is about a beautiful face to whom everyone is attracted in various ways. Nearly all those attractions are exploitative, ranging from trivial to profound, mutually beneficial to rape. This web of different attractions is incredibly dense, and after several viewings I still cannot chart them all. The boy takes a vow to pay back the world and contributes to the complexities with his plottings.
So much for the story, which is engaging and deep, but see what Oshima has done. He has made the film so lovely, so subtly enticing on its face that we are charmed by it just as the characters around Sozaburo are by his face. Its a subliminal trick, but all of a sudden our relationship to the film is cast in doubt, and the simple question of what is love is merged with the matter of what does it mean to appreciate beauty in general. Watch as Oshima pulls the very same tricks in his crafty seductions as Sozaburo does.
Watch yourself watching as the characters do. Then shudder as you realise his revenge.
Posted in 2003
Ted’s Evaluation — 3 of 3: Worth watching.
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