His character, Kano, seems to wear make-up, accentuating his features as feminine. It's unclear if he's making himself up as attractively as possible, or whether the filmmakers overdid it. For me, one of the things that doesn't make sense about the story is that the other samurai only fall for Kano and not each other. Why does the only sexually attractive guy look like a girl?

I don't think you understood the story.

The first hint is in your own words. There is murky division between homosexual and heterosexual love and that is when a man falls in love with another man who looks like a woman. The attraction isn't homosexual or homoerotic.


For this reason and at least one other that I can think of, I think the comparison to "Brokeback Mountain" is shallow and based on false assumptions. "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" was not true to the book, but I'm not sure why you say Oshima "skirted around the central themes." I'm not sure if you understand Japanese cinema.

Similar themes of defining femininity and attraction are explored in Takeshi Kitano's "Zatoichi" and go as far back as the world's first novel, "The Tale of Genji."

The inspiration for "Gohatto" were two stories, one that used the word "maegami" (bangs or hair in front) in the title and this comes up in the movie.

The ending has more to do with Kano's character than the homosexual relationships within the story.

My inital comment about the make-up was a confusion about what the character was thinking by wearing make-up, if indeed he was. I was interested in his motivations as well as the reactions of his fellow students. I'm gay, so obviously I was reading the film from that perspective.

I find your comment about two men having sex without it being homosexual ludicrous. The samurai didn't think of him as a woman, but as a feminine man. A man nevertheless.

I felt that the director was "skirting around the issue" by looking mainly at the reactions of the other samurai, rather than hearing from the ones in the relationship.

I haven't read Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, because I was talking about the film as it stands - it doesn't matter to me that it wasn't true to the book.

I've only been watching a lot of Japanese cinema for about ten years now and don't claim to understand it all (but thank you for pointing that out) - my reviews are for people in the same position - I treat it as a hobby, not a university course.

There are cultures that do not consider men necessarily homosexual even if they engage in homosexual acts. Usually, this requires that there be few or no women readily available and the status of the other person be limited and less powerful. Even in American culture, in a prison the men who engage in homosexual acts are not necessarily to be considered homosexual or would by choice choose another man. As I imagine you trying to argue this point with felons in a free for all, I do not see you winning the argument--no matter how ridiculous you might consider it.

As a gay man, you might be more sensitive to those socio-political points as well as the different cultural positions gay men have and do hold.

In Japan, a man who dresses as a woman under certain circumstances is not suspected of being homosexual as would be here. And yet, even in the US, not all men who wear women's clothes are homosexual.

As for reading source material, this is what a professional level reviewer would do and has nothing to do with university level academics.

You wrote that "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence," skirted some issues, however, in your above comment you talk about samurai. There were no samurai in that movie, but soldiers. In the movie Taboo, perhaps you missed the issue and thus thought the director was "skirting" the issue. I did not see that in either case the director was "skirting" the issue, however, American movies have a tendency to hit you over the head with the point/message. This is not true for all films.

A movie stands within the context of culture. Both movies were made by Japanese directors. The base material in one was British/South African. The base material in the other was Japanese.

One consideration a reviewer might have is how a Japanese director, aiming for a domestic audience might change the themes of the book that dealt with a sensitive subject--a war that the Japanese had lost, how views of the UK and America differed and the different relationship between Japan and the UK and Japan and the US.

In any case, here is what Roger Ebert wrote:

The problem with Sozaburo Kano (Ryuhei Matsuda) is not that he is gay, but that he is so beautiful, so feminine, that he is a distraction and inspires jealousy. He seems fully aware of his appeal and enhances it with a kind of smoldering passivity that dares the other men to start something.

I still believe the central relationship in Taboo is a homosexual one. The samurai, throughout the film, constantly talk about whether they are attracted to or sleeping with Kano. Most of them either seriously deny that they are "that way" inclined, or make jokes about it. They are all very conscious of the division between who has gay or straight sex. It's not murky at all. There certainly isn't a general acceptance that it doesn't matter whether he is a man or not.

The Ebert quote is helpful though, as it explains some of the plot that I failed to understand from watching the movie - but I would still have liked to hear more from the character himself about his motivations in all of it.

My comment about the "director skirting about" the central samurai characters was of course about Taboo, the plot was similar to Mr Lawrence in that the central romantic relationship was inferred, and the film concentrated on the reactions of the other soldiers.

As far as I know, Blogcritics is made up amateur critics aspiring to better ourselves. My personal goal is to write up my first impressions of a film from the perspective of a frequent film-goer. Only when I write reviews for fan magazines or DVD inserts, then I read up on all the available source material. The reviews I write for blogs are for people who won't have time to do hours of homework every time they watch a film.

I still spend considerable time researching my blog entries, but now I'm spending as long watching films as writing about them, I'm constantly aware that I could just watch instead of write, as I'm sure you'd prefer me to.

Perhaps I'll stick to horror movies in the future, as that's my specialist subject.