I think it's hard for Westerners to rate this film as well as the rest of Kawamoto's films. That's because they are generally based very heavily upon traditional Japanese stories and Shinto ideas that simply are tough to comprehend for outsiders. While I have watched more Japanese films that 99.9% of the Westerners out there, I still felt very much like a confused outsider watching these shorts. Because of this, I often could enjoy the beautiful artistry of the films but the stories often left me flat. I really would love to see some reviews by Japanese reviewers--they probably could do the films more justice than I could.
Like many of Kawamoto's films, this one features stop-motion Barbie-like figures (though with much greater detail) along with beautiful traditional watercolor paintings. In many ways, this is like his DOJIJI TEMPLE and BREAKING OF BRANCHES IS FORBIDDEN shorts. They are tremendously nice to look at but the stories confused me. The film oddly is the worst captioned in the DVD set of Kawamoto's shorts--with many, many spelling errors. The rest were fine--this one had numerous errors.
This tale is a traditional Japanese folk tale about a beautiful young lady who has two admirers. They both ask her to marry, but she doesn't want to disappoint either so she makes no decision. Later, when the men get into a test of machismo, she feels guilty about it and commits suicide (this made no sense to me, by the way). In turn, they were so despondent that they agreed to kill each other. In the afterlife, even though the guys killed themselves, she is punished and sent to Purgatory. Once there, she dives into Hell and eventually receives expiation for her sins (though she didn't seem to have any) and the film ends. And, I am left really confused.
While I love Japanese movies, I am not sure if I even liked KATAKU. It was pretty but also pretty confusing and left me a bit cold.
Like many of Kawamoto's films, this one features stop-motion Barbie-like figures (though with much greater detail) along with beautiful traditional watercolor paintings. In many ways, this is like his DOJIJI TEMPLE and BREAKING OF BRANCHES IS FORBIDDEN shorts. They are tremendously nice to look at but the stories confused me. The film oddly is the worst captioned in the DVD set of Kawamoto's shorts--with many, many spelling errors. The rest were fine--this one had numerous errors.
This tale is a traditional Japanese folk tale about a beautiful young lady who has two admirers. They both ask her to marry, but she doesn't want to disappoint either so she makes no decision. Later, when the men get into a test of machismo, she feels guilty about it and commits suicide (this made no sense to me, by the way). In turn, they were so despondent that they agreed to kill each other. In the afterlife, even though the guys killed themselves, she is punished and sent to Purgatory. Once there, she dives into Hell and eventually receives expiation for her sins (though she didn't seem to have any) and the film ends. And, I am left really confused.
While I love Japanese movies, I am not sure if I even liked KATAKU. It was pretty but also pretty confusing and left me a bit cold.
