Tabu

Some people have a sexual magnetism so intense that it's scary

for everyone--gay, straight and disinterested--to be around them.

It's because any mature person can sense that a huge and

destructive power has been placed in the hands of someone not

responsible enough to wield it--and that can be pretty much

anyone so cursed/blessed. You feel as if a small, mercurial child

has his fingers on a hydrogen bomb. These are the most attractive

and the most frightening people in the world.

Nagisa Oshima's TABOO is a spellbinding quasi-thriller in which

every scene squirms with a sexual tension that's almost

unbearable. As in MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE, the tension between Japanese militarist face-saving and an

underlying homoeroticism sizzles to the boiling point.

Oshima has an understated gift for intensifying everything. The

simplest closeups have a charged, my-horniness-is-giving-me-a-migraine sizzle. TABOO resembles

the sixties British Z-movie STATION SIX SAHARA, in which Carroll

Baker enters a desert outpost of military men and causes libidos

to go bananas. Except that here, Oshima diagrams the psychology

as clearly as Kubrick might. TABOO does not perhaps have the

human depth to be a masterpiece, but it is a reminder that Oshima

is the cinema's reigning poet of the war between control and

uncontrol.

"Gohatto" is set in mid-19th century Japan, among the Shinsengumi, a samurai militia created to uphold law and order and to defend the shogunate against reformist forces which sought to restore power to the Emperor. The central character is Sozaburo Kano, a teenage recruit to the force. Sozaburo is a beautiful young man, whose effeminate appearance inspires sexual desire among his comrades.

The film's title has been translated both as "Taboo" and "The Code", and refers to the strict code of discipline which prevailed among the samurai, severe violations of which could be punished by death. Despite the severity of the samurai code, however, homosexuality per se was not taboo, as it would have been in Western societies at this date. A British soldier of the Victorian era who had a sexual relationship with a comrade would have been liable to severe punishment and, at the very least, to dismissal from the Army in disgrace. In Japan, however, homosexual relationships among the samurai were tolerated. Sozaburo, however, poses problems for his superiors in that his quasi-feminine beauty leads to jealousies among the men and thereby endangers discipline. Although he is the central character, he is a passive one; the film is less about him than about the passions he unleashes, passions to which Sozaburo himself seems largely indifferent.

As a drama, "Gohatto" is not particularly interesting; my interest was held much more by its aesthetic aspects. To a Western audience, the film will seem strange and exotic, but its strangeness does not lie in flamboyance or showiness; indeed, I suspect that a Western film celebrating nineteenth-century gay life would be much more flamboyant in style. Rather, its strangeness lies in its austerity and restraint. The acting is deliberately stylised, almost ritualistic. The look of the film is also austere. It is set at the very end of what might be called the era of Old Japan. Although the 1850s and 1860s were the period when the Japanese were first starting to open their country up to the West, there is very little, if any, visual evidence of Western influence on show here. (Were the film to be set only a decade or two later, say around the time featured in "The Last Samurai", Western influences would have been much more visible).

Director Nagisa Ōshima's palette is a very limited one; the black and white of the samurais' uniforms, together with browns and greys. Bright colours are used very sparingly. Most of the film is set indoors, in traditional plain, sparsely furnished Japanese interiors. The result is an aesthetic which is austere, yet strangely beautiful- and also very masculine. Only briefly in the scene set in a brothel, where we see brighter colours and richer decoration, do we see a more feminine aesthetic. "Gohatto" can perhaps be thought of as an "art film" in the most literal meaning of the term, the sort of film where every shot seems to have been composed like a picture, and a work of icy, formal beauty. 7/10

Gohatto: 7/10

This was the only Kitano movie I had seen until Brother, and I thought he was someone else in the movie. And then I saw a "more impressive" actor... who turned out to be Kitano. Doh! The story of this was very interesting, and I'm not sure how it'd go over in America. It explores homosexuality and it's relative openness in the samurai, and is based around a handsome young man, who a lot of men fall in love with. These men start turning up dead, and a jealous member of the clan is suspected. The movie gets confusing at times, but I think that is more because of a cultural difference than script downfalls. Kitano is brilliant in this one as the captain who seems to be struggling to hide his affections for the young man (Ryuhei Matsuda as Sozaburo Kano). There are several branching storylines, but they all lead back to the main one. Not a masterpiece of anything, but more quality Asian cinema.

I happened to catch this film on BBC4 last night. My attention was immediately caught by the stunning Japanese setting, and as the film progressed, by the unusual storyline.

This film is about the Shinsen militia: a group of samurai in shogun times. The story explores the homoerotic tensions between the men, as well as the conflict with another militia (group of samurai).

In a way, not much happens in the film, but at the same time, it is fascinating from beginning to end. Takeshi 'Beat' Kitano gives an impressive performance as one of the older samurai, and in fact all the actors are very good.

While the overall atmosphere of the film is quite dark, there are many funny moments which lift the mood. The humour is quite subtle - no slapstick here.

The film is visually stunning, with wonderful use of light and colour to emphasise the mood of each scene. The Japanese mountains, lakes, and buildings look gorgeous.

There are some moments in the film which are quite graphic, both sex and violence. However, this is not done in a gratuitous or grotesque way, and I didn't find it offensive.

Overall, as another reviewer has commented, this film is somewhat cold. Despite the powerful events that happen in the film, they don't really emotionally involve you as a viewer. The film almost feels like a parable rather than a 'realistic' story.

In summary, this is a gorgeous-looking film with an unusual subject matter, which is well worth watching.

Oshima's first film in 14 years after illness was apparently directed from a wheel chair, and it's tempting to locate some of its static, formal qualities in the personal restrictions faced by the director. But this cool, intense, and very Japanese piece is stylistically rooted in the country's cinematic past, while at the same time offering provocative work familiar characteristic of this director. In his most famous film, Realm Of The Senses (aka: Ai No Corrida), made 25 years ago, dangerous sexual activity was explicit. In Gohatto (trans: Taboo), things are far less in the open. The expression of sex has been replaced with its obsession although, for Oshima, the irrationality of arousal still remains anti-authoritarian, as it creates impulses that are hard to resist.

For those more used to the straight samurai of old, Oshima's suggestions of cuddles beneath the kimono is a surprise (more outrage was generated in Japan, where it was felt more strongly that such suggestions ran against a proud tradition). One can never imagine stouthearted Toshiro Mifune, the most famous cinematic samurai from the previous generation, falling for another soldier and interrupting his role in Seven Samurai for a romp in the dojo. Cult actor/director 'Beat' Takeshi, here playing Captain Toshizo Hijikata, seems at first sight an odd choice for this sort of drama too, until one remembers the gay gunman he played so convincingly in Takashi Ishii's Gonin (1995). With his impassive face he reduces introspection to the reoccurring flicker of his (real life) tic, which, most aptly here, can suggest everything and nothing. Hijikata's internal narrative, first quizzical about Sozabura's lovers then perturbed about his effect on the garrison, suggests growing doubts resolved only in the final, memorable scene.

In Gohatto, much of the interest of the film lays in the degree in which Sozaburo's beauty arouses the interest of the men around him. Some are openly attracted to him (notably Tashiro, who shortly attempts to climb into the bed with him). Others are on the edge, like Inspector Yamazaki, charged with taking him to the brothel in Shimabara to introduce the youth to women. Most are affected in one way or another; most enigmatically are Hojikata and his superior and close colleague Commander Kondo (Yoichi Sai). As Hojikata observes, "a samurai can be undone by a love of men." But then he wonders too "Why are we both so indulgent with Sozabura?" and Kondo's rectitude and conspicuous silence hides, we suspect, a greater interest in the youth than he might wish to admit.

Oshima's visual scheme creates a film full of the bare, dark wood interiors of the militia base and the mud brown of uniforms, where just a few significant colours stand out. During the early beheading of the renegade samurai by Sozabuta, it is the red splash of the executed man's blood. At other times, Sozabuta wears a unique white robe (the Japanese colour of death). His is a presence and beauty shortly associated with a form of annihilation. In a place full of military men, that we see this feminine youth kill most often is no surprise. Compared to his contemporaries, he is the most adept at the sword unless fazed by romantic entanglements. It's an obvious irony that the object of homosexual affection is also the most deadly of the men; there's more in the fact that a group of iron-hearted soldiers can be so easily divided by an 'enemy' within, one neither fierce nor commanding.

There's another mystery in Gohatto, besides who exactly is sleeping with Sozabuta and who wants to. It's who is the murderer of Yuzawa (Tomorowo Taguchi), and doubts as to the truth of the case persist. This, and the attempt to apprehend the intruders at the base ("they call these samurai?") provide the main impetus of the plot. Like so many great Japanese films of the past, Oshima's says a lot in restraint. Here the arrangement of seated figures within the frame can suggest unspoken tensions, order is paramount, and the use of the camera is elegant and discreet. Some see the resulting style dull, when it is a slower, more contemplative way of seeing the world, one where not every question is answered.

What exactly is 'taboo' in Gohatto is clearly the issue of homosexuality - although confusingly for Western audiences such matters are not explicitly forbidden. Reference is made to the military code, which hangs on the barrack walls. Extracts appear on screen too, but no mention is made of prohibiting gay relations between soldiers. A man may be beheaded for illicitly borrowing money, but sleeping with his comrades at arms, while gossip worthy, is only really of concern when discipline is threatened. There "no secrets on Heaven and Earth (and) everyone knows it," says one of the intertitles, and Hojikata himself refers to the "tacit understanding" which normally keeps things in check. A policy which roughly equates to the modern American army's own "Don't ask, don't tell."

The film is helped immensely by Ryuichi Sakamoto's incessant, metronomic score, the steady beat of which considerably amplifies the obsessions and drawn out tensions of events. Like Oshima's interiors, it is uncluttered music, the muted colours dashed with an occasional significant tone. Now and again, urgency and violence break into this world: the initial beheading scene, the murderer's attacks, or the sword battle by the river. As a package, the result readily deserves art house admirers - especially as the director saves the best scene for last, expressing both Hojikata's final position, and a main thread of Gohatto, with hardly a cut more than necessary. Recommended.