frojavigdis

Davey, well-loved and popular for stuffing his buddies full of pills, is assaulted for reasons that are never quite crystal clear. When he dies, his brother Will, who had since retired from the criminal scene to become a lumberjack, comes back into town to avenge him.

And I slept like the dead. No joke-- this movie put me to sleep, despite my best efforts not to embarrass myself in front of my friends (since they chose the movie). The scenes moved more slowly than in Babette's Feast. Monotone dialogue and lack of soundtrack did not help. Lastly, if you can't feel sorry for a young drug dealer dying in the prime of his life, forget empathizing with the characters because they spend the entire movie hang-faced over Davey's death.

Bottom line: dull beyond words.

Mysteriously isolated in the forest, the villagers must live with the threat of unknown beings that inhabit the surrounding woods. Fear of the unknown does not stand in the way of the love between two young villagers.

It is difficult to praise this movie without giving away its secrets, but this is a movie that would have been true to the heart of Joseph Campbell the mythologist. Not for the average moviegoer, this film is presented in a stylistic manner full of dialogue that impresses with its biblical gravity and unusual but likeable main characters. Visually, it is splendid to watch like Shyamalan's other recent films.

I've watched the entire trilogy of the Musashi Miyamoto films, of which this film is the second part. The first film, titled simply "Musashi Miyamoto," introduces us to the characters of this and the third film. Without having seen the first film and developing some interest in the welfare of the characters, I certainly wouldn't have sat through the second and third films.

"Duel at Ichijoji Temple," this film, deals with Musashi's exploits as a sort of samurai knight-errant, seeking glory in a very ambiguous and roundabout way. Two women are trailing after him, as Kurosawa films would say, "like goldfish dung." Musashi himself is a flat character on whom Toshiro Mifune's acting skills are wasted. He displays very little emotion or intellect, despite his supposed interest in one of the women and enlightening education by his monk teacher (as we saw in the first film).

If Musashi is flat, the female characters are steamrolled. Their hand wringing, collapsing, and sobbing is typical of American movies of this time period and grows tedious in a samurai film. Having seen other films from this time period set in the days of samurai, I've seen that much more can be done with female characters. The plot was likewise predictable and slow-moving.

If you don't care about characters or plot, the high points of the movie may compensate: beautiful color landscapes and Toshiro Mifune's thrilling fight scenes. Otherwise, I recommend films by Kurosawa or Mizoguchi ("Sanjuro," the mysterious "Ugetsu") over this trilogy. 5/10