The Pillow Book
Amazon.co.uk Review
Peter Greenaway (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Drowning by Numbers) continues to delight and disturb us with his talent for combining storytelling with optic artistry. The Pillow Book is divided into 10 chapters (consistent with Greenaway’s love of numbers and lists) and is shot to be viewed like a book, complete with tantalising illustrations and footnotes (subtitles) and using television’s “screen-in-screen” technology. As a child in Japan, Nagiko’s father celebrates her birthday retelling the Japanese creation myth and writing on her flesh in beautiful calligraphy, while her aunt reads a list of “beautiful things” from a 10th-century pillow book. As she gets older, Nagiko (Vivian Wu) looks for a lover with calligraphy skills to continue the annual ritual. She is initially thrilled when she encounters Jerome (Ewan McGregor), a bisexual translator who can speak and write several languages, but soon realises that although he is a magnificent lover, his penmanship is less than acceptable. When Nagiko dismisses the enamoured Jerome, he suggests she use his flesh as the pages which to present her own pillow book. The film, complete with a musical score as international as the languages used in the narration, is visually hypnotic and truly an immense “work of art”. –Michele Goodson
I didn’t check the aspect ratio (4:3!) when I bought the DVD. I had it already on tape, and the copy kept the original ratio. How can anybody do such a stupid thing as cutting off the edges of a film that is all about frames and pictorical composition? The film, originally, is a masterpiece.
Rating: 2 / 5
I happen to be a great admirer of the controversial Mr Greenaway. I think his direction in film is bold and produces powerful results. The Pillow Book is a great example of this talent. It is an amazing combination of his narrative technique, experimental explorations and talent for finding compelling stories. The images are beautiful, especially the shot of Vivian Wu standing in the rain covered with writing on her flesh which slowly melts away. Her character is not that complex, but the action of the story is sufficient to carry her along throughout the tale as she fights for independence and a suitable form of artistic expression. Essentially the story is about the fetishisation of books and sex. These things are enough to make a great movie in my mind. Nagiko is a girl who goes through a ritual where her father writes on her back on her birthday as he tells her of a myth. After burning her way out of a suffocating marriage, she grows up to become a radical artist writing on bodies and searching for a man who can replace her father in the birthday tradition. She meets a talented man named Jerome who she falls in love with, but is eventually sacrificed to her father’s old enemy. In the course of the narrative she writes her own Pillow Book on a series of men. It culminates in a gruesome act of jealousy and revenge (a notion not foreign to Greenaway’s narratives).
Some emotionally intense scenes are made particularly powerful with the screen-in-screen shots because it shows at one time the levels between thought and action, self-perception and actual action. This is a new style for Greenaway that works tremendously well in this movie because it fits so perfectly with the egotism and self-obsession of the characters involved. The movie as a whole is a powerful evocation of a great Japanese classic. I highly recommend this movie who is in the mood to watch something eccentric, visually moving and stunningly beautiful.
Rating: 5 / 5
This is a fantastic DVD, the sounds and picture quality are great. However, the movie contains many pictures within pictures (like windows on a computer screen) that looked fantastic on the big screen but many of these smaller pictures have been awkwardly cut off for the DVD version. It’s a shame. The movie is still great and worth watching. And Greenaway outdoes himself for coming up with something even creepier than the ‘buffet’ scene from Thief, Cook, Wife and her Lover.
Rating: 4 / 5
A lot of people have commented (not just here) about the aspect ratio of this DVD, 4:3?!
It does seem a shame, unless it was done for artistic reasons…
…The film makes use of many `picture in picture’ scenes, where you’ll see a scene playing within a box in another scene. Maybe the 4:3 aspect ratio is to ensure that these were viewed with good fidelity to the original.
The subject of the film isn’t an easy one to follow, but if you stick with it then it stands a good chance of charming you over. The 18 certificate is mainly a reaction to the nudity and sex in the film. The sex though, isn’t explicit, and the nudity is done in a beautiful way and is in no way `sexualised’. The film has many surprises, and even though you know Ewan McGregor is in it, it still takes you back when such a familiar face (and voice) appears in a film which often feels far distanced from real life.
The `surprise’ of Ewan McGregor is essential for this film – he brings with him an energy which lacks, up to his arrival. The chemistry between Jerome (McGregor) and Nagiko (Viv Wu) crackles on screen and if it weren’t for this then the film would be lacklustre.
The film deals with interesting themes, such as the feeling of being an outsider when surrounded by a culture different to the one you were brought up in. It looks at the love of literature combined with physical pleasure. But the clever use of visuals sometimes takes away from the essence of the film so that you’re left trying to watch several scenes at once and don’t get the full effect of either – they’re meant to complement, but they often cloud.
In a nutshell: This is a great film dogged with two many clever ideas. It felt disjointed for me, I never felt as absorbed as I could have been. The acting was great, the internet seems to have lots of sites which sensationalise the fact that you see Ewan McGregors penis a fair old bit, but the film manages this brilliantly and it always seems natural – you don’t get shocked by McGregor’s ol’fella. This is worth a watch, but it won’t be a prized member of my DVD collection.
Rating: 3 / 5
I purchased this DVD because I was kind of curious to see what came out of a Greenaway/McGregor collaboration. Well, it’s a piece of art – as always when it’s signed Greenaway. The Pillow Book is not quite as hard to swallow as other Greenaway movies I’ve seen, but it’s not for the faint-hearted either. Some of the images are difficult to take – not because of nudity or other issues, but simply because of what they create in the spectator’s head. But then again, that’s something I like about Greenaway.
The film is very well cast for all the characters. Vivian Wu is excellent, so are Oida and Ogata. McGregor is eye-candy as usual, but gives his best performance here in a scene where you can only hear him from the off. There was so much passion and emotion in that particular moment of “Jerome’s” suffering that I could hardly hold back the tears.
Rating: 5 / 5