Discover
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Masaki Kobayashi
Director -
Toru Takemitsu
Original Music Composer -
Yōko Mizuki
Screenplay -
Kiyoshi Awazu
Title Designer -
Lafcadio Hearn
Novel -
Yoshio Miyajima
Cinematography -
Shigemasa Toda
Art Direction -
Hideo Nishizaki
Sound
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CinemaSerf 12/2/2024 10:21:53 AM
I'm always a little daunted when I settle down in a cinema seat for a film that is 3 hours long - I fear the last glass of wine may have been one too many - but this simply flew by. It is a compendium of four different Japanese "poems" that deal with just about every emotion in the human panoply - love, hate, greed, joy, fear, envy, betrayal... You name it! Each story has a central theme that, perhaps not terribly sophisticated to anyone with a fairly well-centred moral compass of their own, delivers a salutatory lesson in what is decent and what is flawed about human nature, even amongst the best of us. "In A Cup of Tea" - is a wonderfully intriguing story and my personal favourite is "Hoichi" - featuring a blind priest who can sing such beautiful songs but at such a fearful price. The staging is superb, though the fight scenes - especially on the water - maybe a little too studio-bound to be truly effective. The colours and sounds test every range of your senses; ecstasy and despair, bliss and rage and leave you, at the end, feeling as drained and fulfilled, simultaneously, as any film could hope to possibly engender... This really is a glorious roller-coaster of a ride!
Tatsuya Nakadai
Minokichi (segment "The Woman of the Snow")Tetsuro Tamba
Warrior (segment "Hoichi the Earless")Takashi Shimura
Head Priest (segment "Hoichi the Earless")Michiyo Aratama
First Wife (segment "The Black Hair")Kunie Tanaka
Yasaku (segment "Hoichi the Earless")Kei Satō
Ghost Samurai (segment "In a Cup of Tea")Rentaro Mikuni
Husband (segment "The Black Hair")Jun Tazaki
Kannai's Colleague #1 (segment "In a Cup of Tea") (uncredited)