Ukiyo no gakka

If you loved The Remains of the Day and the works of Kazuo Ishiguro in general, you will love this movie. Through beautiful cinematography, a poignant screenplay that follows the book closely, and excellent acting from Ken Watanabe and others, this movie offers a clever and thoughtful adaptation of the original novel.

Given my interest in Japan after the war and my like of Kazuo Ishiguro, it's no surprise I enjoyed this film. It smoothes swiftly along, and to the extent I remember the book, seems to follow it closely. I do have two criticisms. First, the Tokyo it presents seems far too spiffy and attractive for the early postwar period. I realize we're looking at a higher end of society. Still, everything from the streets to the restaurants seem more like the Tokyo of the mid-1960s. Extreme hardship is rarely seen. Second, and more importantly, following the book as it does, is the issue of unreliable narrator. I realize from a real-world view, our recollections may greatly differ from reality, something which writers may want to capture. But for me as a consumer, my feeling is "you're the creator, so you know what happened....why the ambiguity?" But I have the attention span of a child; I get lost in a story. I often have to ask my companion or find out from the Internet what happened. Others may like Ishiguro's approach, but to me it leads to unexplainable surprises in the plot that dampens the enjoyment of this otherwise fine film.

It was a little slow getting started but it had my favorite actor in it was the main character I love him and a lot of things I've seen him in and again I love all the actors and actresses in these cultural movies and also I get a lot of information about the culture and I love artistry It's about art and how passionate this culture is about art and what it can do in the real world instead of the art of writing about art without being confusing I don't want to give any spoilers away so my review is I thought it was a really good movie and it had the best actors in it. It wants me to say about your other stuff but I don't want to because it all spoil it I don't understand the ratings on some of these should be higher I think this one should have been a little higher.