Louie The 14th?
I was wondering.. are they trying to make Hideyoshi out to be like Louie the 14th? Since he uses the sun symbol, and also dresses similarly as him as if he were the sun.
shareOr Hughie or Dewie?
The sun is visible in Japan too, you know. It's an obvious image for any great leader. I very much doubt that any reference to Louis XIV was intended.
It seems Japanese are always reinventing themselves. I loved the visual... something baroque plus ninja plus sort of shogun feudalism plus the CGI colorful version of Kagemusha in a Robin Hood film. The pastry environment, the decoration and costumes is unusual within that context. It seems Louie is one of several inspirations.. the Japanese dressed in a French armour and why not if we have seen Asian western as well? During WWII and after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs the emperor Hirohito was heard for the first time in radio addressing to the nation. Until that moment many Japanese would've sworn he was the son of SOLAR goddess Amaterasu. You know the nation's flag is a RED SUN, isn't it?
Movies IMHO are mainly visual. Started like that during silent cinematic adventures. And Japanese have known that from the very beginning cos Kurasawa learned a lot and watched a lot of movies...
Music, special effects or whatever else goes along with the motion images and not the other way around. Movies don't have to teach with endless dialogue of characters shooting off their mouths during two hours like some European films or Woody Allen-God-forbids. We watch movies to entretain ourselves. If besides the visual it manages to spread some intelligent dialogues or perhaps not even dialogues but just a message (like Koyanitsqaya) , that's fine for me. However I think the movie took an eternity. Too long. Was good but not epic.
There's a thin gap between skepticism and cynicism