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the_lady_lily) wrote2007-08-10 12:07 am
the_lady_lily) wrote2007-08-10 12:07 am
Entry tags:
Filmography
The Pillow Book
Gosh, this is a strange one; have only just finished watching it, and thus am not entirely sure what I'm making of it.
The plot is essentially that a young girl is becomes erotically obsessed with her father's habit of writing birthday greetings on her face in later life, wanting her lovers to write all over her. A young translator encourages her to write on him instead; exploring this avenue, she decides she wishes to be published in said medium. Her first choice of publisher turns out to be both the man who blackmailed her father and the lover of the young man who encouraged her to try being the pen instead of the paper; she thus sends the publisher her novel on the young man, and it is accepted. She is jealous of their relationship and writes her next books on other men; the young man commits suicide. She writes on his dead body for his burial; the publisher exhumes him, skins him and makes a pillow book out of his corpse. Ick. Through sending him the following volumes on other young men, she eventually brings him to the place where he is killed by the last book when she reveals who she is and what she knows of his deeds.
Firstly, the visual images are beautiful. There's a constant interplay with the famous 'Pillow Book' as well as the icky skin one, leading to lots of ancient Japanese courtly language and imagery; the modern world is also very sleek and chic. That, I think, was my favourite part of the film. Ewan McGregor is Jerome, the young translator who eventually ends up killing himself, and he's not too bad, although why he has an Irish accent and his mother has a cut-glass upper English one is never explained. You did get to see quite a bit of him nude, which was comparatively pleasant.
The scenes wherein Jerome committed suicide and skinned were, quite frankly, icky and I either had the fast-forward on or my eyes firmly to the bed. Not surprising given I am a bit of a wimp, but you know. There was also a series of apparently gratuitous maids who pottered about.
Actually, what was quite impressive was that the male written-on bodies were quite aesthetically independently beautiful rather than just sexualised, although it was quite clear that all the published could see was the sex until the final few 'books'.
I think, on balance, I'm probably going with three stars because it was incredibly pretentious and a wee bit non-me-friendly, but I did find myself captivated by the visuals and the sheer dreaminess of the action. The interpolation of lists and phrases from the original Pillow Book was probably the strongest part of the film, and that I very much enjoyed; the transition of the protagonist from paper to pen was also very interesting. Yes, definitely three stars rather than four.
Gosh, this is a strange one; have only just finished watching it, and thus am not entirely sure what I'm making of it.
The plot is essentially that a young girl is becomes erotically obsessed with her father's habit of writing birthday greetings on her face in later life, wanting her lovers to write all over her. A young translator encourages her to write on him instead; exploring this avenue, she decides she wishes to be published in said medium. Her first choice of publisher turns out to be both the man who blackmailed her father and the lover of the young man who encouraged her to try being the pen instead of the paper; she thus sends the publisher her novel on the young man, and it is accepted. She is jealous of their relationship and writes her next books on other men; the young man commits suicide. She writes on his dead body for his burial; the publisher exhumes him, skins him and makes a pillow book out of his corpse. Ick. Through sending him the following volumes on other young men, she eventually brings him to the place where he is killed by the last book when she reveals who she is and what she knows of his deeds.
Firstly, the visual images are beautiful. There's a constant interplay with the famous 'Pillow Book' as well as the icky skin one, leading to lots of ancient Japanese courtly language and imagery; the modern world is also very sleek and chic. That, I think, was my favourite part of the film. Ewan McGregor is Jerome, the young translator who eventually ends up killing himself, and he's not too bad, although why he has an Irish accent and his mother has a cut-glass upper English one is never explained. You did get to see quite a bit of him nude, which was comparatively pleasant.
The scenes wherein Jerome committed suicide and skinned were, quite frankly, icky and I either had the fast-forward on or my eyes firmly to the bed. Not surprising given I am a bit of a wimp, but you know. There was also a series of apparently gratuitous maids who pottered about.
Actually, what was quite impressive was that the male written-on bodies were quite aesthetically independently beautiful rather than just sexualised, although it was quite clear that all the published could see was the sex until the final few 'books'.
I think, on balance, I'm probably going with three stars because it was incredibly pretentious and a wee bit non-me-friendly, but I did find myself captivated by the visuals and the sheer dreaminess of the action. The interpolation of lists and phrases from the original Pillow Book was probably the strongest part of the film, and that I very much enjoyed; the transition of the protagonist from paper to pen was also very interesting. Yes, definitely three stars rather than four.
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I found myself thinking 'beautiful', then 'Oh ick, lethal violence presented as erotica in beautiful images... again'.
I then found myself thinking that, given my rather longwinded writing style, I had better cultivate rather, um, larger partners.
My next though was that, given my convoluted and disjointed sentence structures - a sure and certain indication of a mind that might charitably be labelled 'nonlinear' - I had better start dating contortionists.
At that point I decided never to watch films like The Pillow Book before going to bed.