Haru no yuki

I knew nothing about this film, or its director, before choosing it to alleviate the boredom of a transatlantic flight. I am very, very happy I did.

The story of Haru no yuki is simple but engrossing; its development: meticulously polished; the characters interesting, though not complex. The relationship of Honda and Matsugae is especially compelling. Matsugae is the only truly complicated persona on the scene, and this really is his movie. Satoshi Tsumabuki does an admirable job.

Though the film is not entirely satisfying (I can't quite pin down why), it is very stirring and, in the end, damn pleasant to look at.

It's obvious that the movie is adapted from a book, or there can be no way that 2 of the more popular stars in Japan will agree to act in this movie, provided that the screenplay is horrendous. It's incredibly slow and the slow shots are meaningless. They are just taking one minute to be ten minutes in the movie. And I was typically waiting for the guy to collapse and die the whole time, for that is obviously what is going to happen at the end. You can see it coming from the beginning. The book which the movie based its story on should be a pretty well-written book, but I highly doubt that it is suitable to be adapted into a movie. That's the thing with Japanese novels typically. Japanese authors use beautiful words and construct beautiful worlds, but unfortunately the beauty is so surreal that it can only exists in the head. Well, there are some very good adaptations of Japanese novels, say, Yogisha X no Kenshin for example. However, in that case, apart from the all-around brilliant acting from the actors, the plot plays a very important role too. The novel itself has a very strong plot, and the truth behind the crime is so impactful that it makes it difficult for anyone or anything to screw its adaptation. Unfortunately, this is no Yogisha X no Kenshin. I have not read the book, and i'm not prejudging, but still i know it is a horrible movie. Just like I have not read Twilight but I know it is not adapted well.

This is a heartfelt, sincere attempt to capture the love story in Spring Snow. It is carefully and respectfully done with high production values and an obvious respect to the source. Yes, the adaptation suffers the usual sins of deviation from the book, including here the astonishing transposition of the deepest irony from its place within the novel to the beginning of the film, thus giving away one of the novel's most striking, unexpected, and ironic moments which, when revealed, colors so much of the novel.

However, this is not my main complaint. It is, rather, that in the novel the love story takes place in and can only be understood in terms of the other cultural aspects of the novel.

In the film, the love story is abstracted from these other elements. As such, the film becomes a soap. A sincere, well made, perhaps much superior soap, but still, a soap.

Thus, you can watch this and come away with: "So what's the big deal?" Read the amazing book and you'll know. The love story is even more dramatic, but part of the reason is the much broader context in which it's occurring that, at best, is only hinted at in the film. Not to mention Mishima's exquisite description of aspects of the environs in the midst of dramatic events.

Still, Spring Snow, the movie, is superior to much of what passes for drama today.