• Greenaway has largely abandoned his past aesthetic choices of mise-en-scene, long takes and the old “moving art” he used in The cook, the thief, his wife and her lover and Prospero’s books– Here’s he’s in love with the editing (he does his own editing) and the like pop-up movie within a movie impositions rather than mise-en-scene. He did his own editing here. It’s not a good choice- much uglier. I think you could argue the JFK digital editing (which must have hit Greenaway in the mid-90’s) ruined this work to some degree
  • There’s still just enough beauty in his framing- he’s still a skilled designer of mise-en-scene but there’s just so many less redeemable and beautiful moments.
  • Gorgeous red lantern scene
  • Greenaway is an aesthetician- it’s both exhausting and admirable (even when he’s wrong in his choices as he is here)
  • Another meditation on fetish, pro-intellectualism, nudity, exercising, cataloguing, a love of books. Ritual murder/suicide
  • Love the scenes with the calligraphy superimposed through lighting on the characters and walls
  • It’s so busy with the aspect ratios, dissolve editing- which isn’t even really a transition for the most part-
  • Love story narrative not a success. It’s not well written—it’s a little odd that a film and artist so in love with books and words doesn’t seem overly fastidious or hell-bent on the quality of the narrative
  • A retelling of a 1,000 year old book on cataloguing
  • For Vivian Wu, Ewan McGregor or Ken Ogata (Mishima) it’s not a great feather in the cap as actors
  • The Vivian Wu “Nagiko” is a reader. Her villainous husband is anti-intellectual
  • Recommend but not near the top 10 of 1996