The Pillow Book

Rating:
Summary: A Visual Marvel
Review: I saw this movie after hearing an interview with the director. His goal was to make a movie that would be as entertaining without words and dialogue as it would be with these elements. Of course there is dialogue and a good story, but the visual aspect of this movie is incredible. It rises to the level of art. This imagery stayed with me for weeks. It was the first time I had seen Ewan McGregor in a film and barely made the connection when I saw Trainspotting. Vivian Wu is sexually stunning in her leading role, much different than that of the mistress in The Last Emporer. The setting in Taiwan is also very impressive. Though I do not own a DVD player yet I am buying this DVD because I want it to be my first DVD experience. I am not basing my expectations on the DVD format but more on revisiting this special movie is a special way.

Rating:
Summary: Greenaway's masterpiece.
Review: The Pillow Book represents the culmination of all of Greenaway's work in film, particularly in the field of digital fusion that he explored to great effect in the earlier Prospero's Books. This, however, is the far more accessible film, and is also Greenaway's most 'mainstream' effort since The Cook, The Thief... Here his unique style is perfectly matched with his story, following a young girl called Nagiko as she grows up, searching for a calligrapher to write upon her as her father once did, whilst seeking revenge against the publisher who prompted his suicide. Accusations of homophobia here are quite erroneous, since the vilification of the gay publisher stems from the fact that he blackmailed Nagiko's father into a sexual relationship, not because he is gay. The other gay relationship in the film, between the publisher and Jerome, is shown without any trace of prejudice. Greenaway handles his material sensitively, and as anyone who is familiar with his work would agree, he is far from prejudiced in this (or any other) respect. Fortunately, given the complex nature of the film, Greenaway has been blessed with very capable actors. The performances here add a human element much needed to juxtapose the beautiful multi-layered images that he presents us with. Coupled with great camerawork, sets and locations and a perfectly chosen soundtrack, the film stands as the finest work of an immensely talented and versatile artist.

Rating:
Summary: Visually Stunning
Review: This film brings together the use of color, sound, and imagery to weave a tale of erotic delights, revenge, and death. The way Peter Greenway brings together the use of color, sound, and text is an example of what film could and should be. This last reviewer is an idiot. I was thrilled to see Ewan Macgregor in the arms of a hot Japanese man. This film is a celebration of Life in all of its aspects.

Rating:
Summary: Gay Viewers Beware!
Review: Peter Greenaway has made one of the most homophobic films in the history of English-language cinema. The plot simply boils down to this: A young woman takes vengence on the wealthy gay man who seduced her father (leading to his suicide) and whose lover she also loved. Replace "the Homosexual" with "The Jew" and you'd be back to the Nazi-era atrocity "Jud Suss". Fortunately, all of this is wrapped up in an artsy enough packaging that most of the queer haters would find the movie incomprehensible. But, somehow, the art-house audiences are caught up enough with Greenaway's visual smoke and mirrors not to realize what they're watching either. A truly evil piece of work.

Rating:
Summary: Not erotic, not art
Review: In this film one of the characters is described by his mother as a shallow fashion-seeker, which effectively sums up this entire film. There is an attempt to be visually artistic,and a pretentious attempt to integrate the story into the framework of a reknown Japanese classic work of erotic literature, but nothing saves this film from sinking under its own weight. The acting is wooden and unconvincing throughout. The scattered story-line is an alarming descent into the degrading sexual exploitation of a mentally unbalanced and confused young woman . The editing is sloppy with scenes actually out of order which you might not notice at first, since, as there is no discernable point to the story, the film dissolves into a set of obscure, disassociated and self-conscious scenes of joyless sex. You can have more fun doing your taxes than watching this film.

Rating:
Summary: Weird!
Review: This is an artsy-farsy kind of thing. I understood what it was trying to accomplish, and it was very different, but not in a 'refreshing' way- it's just kind of... odd.Only redeeming quality is the gratuitous Ewan McGregor nudity...just kidding.

Rating:
Summary: Anamorphic DVD (What it means)
Review: This movie is great and I will order the DVD version. I saw a review giving a bad note saying it is not in widescreen version but in standard version. The DVD is in anamorphic widescreen. It means it can be seen in Standard and Widescreen by toggling the "Pan&Scan" and "Letterbox" settings on your DVD player. Please refer to your manual for more information about this setting.

Rating:
Summary: the pillow book
Review: Peter Greenaway once again does himself proud, more visually stunning and moving than the cook, the theif, his wife, her lover(which I thought nothing could top);extremely powerful. A must see for hopeless romantics.

Rating:
Summary: It's not erotic and it's not art
Review: A neurotic, self-absorbed young Asian woman spends her hours acting out her fixation with her father's sexual ambiguities by picking up men and coaxing them to paint caligraphy on her naked body and then engaging in joyless sex acts with them. This angry, predatory female, portrayed by Vivian Wu, eventually connects up with an equally shallow and dysfunctional young Englishman, played woodenly by Ewan McGregor, who happens to be just like Daddy- a bisexual involved with the very man who corrupted, in her view, her father and intruded into her family life. Interspersed with references to the classic Japanese work of erotic literature, "The Pillowbook", this film possessed all the elements necessary to be a passionate and erotic exploration of how sexual distortion becomes the driving force in young Nagiko's personality and seeps into all aspects of her life. How unfortunate, then, that Greenaway chose not to deliver on this potential and offers us instead a film with all the grace of a tedious Hollywood-style adult sexploitation flick. Wu portrays Nagiko with a particular lack of believability, looking wretchedly unhappy and miserable in her various sex scenes. The relationship between Nagiko and Jerome, her English idiot-savant translator who is so naive he didn't realize that he met her in a brothel, never develops beyond contrived and unconvincing love scenes, in which both actors confront the camera like two under-fed, frightened deer caught in the headlights. The deep passion which would have made Nagiko's plan for revenge credible and animated her love affair with Jerome just isn't there. The story-line really dissolves into this lack of believability, with only one interesting plot development. Was Jerome really stupid enough to take all those pills, or was he cleverly dispatched by Nagiko's wannabe lover, but truthfully, Jerome is so one-dimensional you have a hard time caring. His ultimate fate is so ludicrous it's laughable, with only the tidy little Disney-esque family scene at the end providing more guffaws. Interestingly, the only woman who really understood Jerome, his mother, describes him as a shallow fashion-seeker which effectively sums up this entire film. There is an attempt to be visually artistic, with many still photos of the sort one sees in last year's coffee-table books, but it's not enough to elevate this film beyond bachelorette-party fare

Rating:
Summary: Captivating, gorgeous, feminist....
Review: In Hollywood films, it is rare to see a woman portrayed as both smart and sexual, and even rarer to see a female character who is an artist and a heroine. The famale lead character in "The Pillow Book" is all of the above. The visual images in this film are stunning, and the use of multiple images in each frame only enhances the effect. The one drawback to this DVD, as noted by other reviewers, is that is has been panned-and-scanned, cutting off strips of Peter Greenaway#s gorgeous imagery. Hopefully, this defect will be corrected in future releases, as it truly distroys parts of this masterpeice movie.