The Pillow Book
|
List Price: Our Price: $22.49 You Save: $2.47 (10%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $10.48 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of The Pillow Book
Movie Review: Life as a Literal Canvass
Summary: 5 Stars
Symbolic, Hypnotic, Sense savory film on life as a literal book of art!Movie Review: The Pillow Book
Summary: 5 Stars
Very dramatic and intreging movie. Not your typical story it has a love triangle with a touch of Romeo & Juliet.Movie Review: Ewan McGregor must have needed the money
Summary: 2 Stars
I once thought that any movie with Ewan McGregor in it would be entertainment. I found 'The Pillow Book' more disturbing than entertaining. It was difficult to follow, and I had a hard time figuring out just what the plot really was. The only appeal being when Ewan's pride would make an appearance next. I praise him for having the confidence to show full-frontals, yet it didn't add to the movie. Movie Review: The Pillow Book
Summary: 4 Stars
A stunning visual exploration of literature using the human body as paper to carry the message. Sensual, beautifully photographed, wonderful performances by the lead actors, all serving up a world in Japan that may shock people of other cultures.Movie Review: Unique visual storytelling
Summary: 4 Stars
This is certainly a fascinating film with visual images that are unique and beautiful and disturbing. There are several highly interesting aspects to the film that I would like to explore in this review.
First, Peter Greenaway has the eyes of a visual artist. His attention to the odd detail is incredible and subtle. I found the film to be full of images that went beyond the story line and pentrated at an unconscious emotional level. The act of exploring the human body with a caligraphy brush, composing stories, poems, novels, autobiography is certainly a compelling image and concept. Isn't our life written on our bodies? Don't we read the bodies of those with whom we are intimate? Don't we in some way brand or stain the bodies of those whom we love and in turn are we not burned and molded by those who love us? From the corpses of a young lover wrapped in indigo paper, to baths in ancient urns, the an army of handsome Japanese nude men covered in caligraphy, the film floods you with images. The storyline, the text, is only part of the story - a point I wish that those who did not like this film would recognize.
Second, it is unique storytelling. Nagiko, a Japanese girl, adores here novelist father. She comes to understand however that he must submit to sodomy with his homosexual publisher to remain in print and prosperous. Nagiko marries and becomes an unhappy young bride. She runs away from her husband and Japan to Hong Kong where she eventually becomes a fashion model. She explores the concept of writing on the human body as her art form as she moves from lover to lover, experience to experience. She meets a handsome European translator, Jerome, and becomes fascinated with him once she learns he is the publisher's lover also. She seduces him and then gradually develops a plot of revenge against the publisher. Yet, she has met her sexual, artistic, intellectual, aethitic match in Jerome and they both know that their relationship is rare. She and Jerome plot to have her story read by the publisher while he is making love to Jerome and sees the caligraphy on Jerome's body. But this plot backfires terribly as Nagiko finds she can not bear the jealousy and she rejects Jerome. Jerome, the romantic, kills himself with a drug overdose. The publisher uncovers Jerome's body and has his skin turned into parchment so he can retain his lover in book form. Nagiko learns of this and wants the book, for Jerome's skin is her medium. Her revenge includes writing a series of tales of desire and experince on the bodies of handsome Japanese nude young men whom she sends to the publisher for publication. The publisher is captivated by the beauty of the work and the men and begins to publish her novels and poems. Yet in the end, Nagiko sends an assassin with the final chapter, the last of 12 books, who kills the publisher and retrieves the book composed of Jerome's skin. I dare you to find a more odd story than this!
This visual feast of the unconscious is not for everyone. It is only somewhat linear with flashbacks to Nagiko's childhood and sections from the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon integrated throughout the film. Yet, the character of Nagiko, her cognitive association of writing with the body, made far more sense than many performance and conceptual artists in the art magazines.
I was left with one haunting line, spoken by the 10th century courtesan who wrote the original pillow book in the title who says at the end: "I have loved two things, literature and the body."