Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

WILLIAM FLANIGAN Viewed on DVD. Subtitles = one (1) star. A pot boiler with sumptuous production values. Exterior location and interior sets look/are authentic. The kimonos are stunning. Acting, direction, and cinematography are close to (if not) first rate. Authentic Western Japan dialect (now and then). That's the good stuff. Now the rest. If you were native-born Japanese and lacked English language conversational skills (more and more a rarity today), imagine how, say, a BBC soap opera would come across based on subtitles? Without being able to catch and enjoy much in the way of acting nuances, subplots, etc., would it appear to be just plain tedious, repetitious, and boring? Probably. Also an apt description of this Criterion disc version: it's tedious, repetitious, and boring. The subtitles are vacuous and often incorrect. The disc cries out for extensive supplemental material on what the film is about, the culture it recreates, the author of the source material, backgrounds on the director and lead actresses, etc. If you lack Japanese conversational skills, work on your Japanese, and then re-visit the film in a few years. You might be amazed at how much it has "improved"! Except for the cheap synthesized music. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.

Michael Neumann This elegant domestic drama unfortunately offers little to viewers not already attracted to Japanese culture and tradition. The writing is sensitive; the photography is beautiful; but once the plot lines are clear don't expect many surprises.The story involves a pair of formality-bound wives attempting to uphold etiquette by arranging marriages for their more modern (and thus less willing) younger sisters. And because the film is set during the halcyon days just prior to World War Two, it presumably ends with an elegiac parting glance at the passing of a more refined age.Postscript: the all-too brief impressions above were gleaned from a single, incomplete screening during the film's brief theatrical run at the Opera Plaza Cinema complex in San Franscisco, way back in 1986 (three years later, I would be in the same small theater when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit). Now (certainly) older and (possibly) wiser, I would like the chance to re-evaluate it...

william-t-archer The Makioka Sisters shows Ichikawa going back to one of the greatest 20th Century Japanese writers, Junichiro Tanizaki. Ichikawa had already directed, in the 1950s, a stunning adaptation of the Tanizaki novel The Key. The Key is an elliptical comedy about erotic fixation, with a lush visual style of saturated colors. The Makioka Sisters is a more subtle and delicate film, attuned as the novel was to the undercurrents running through the highly structured lives of the main characters. In some ways, the novel was Tanizaki's attempt to write a modern version of Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji, and Ichikawa seems to have understood this in his adaptation, which brings a great deal of low-key humor and psychological insight to the proceedings, all very much in the Genji style. Essential viewing.

greenridge10 We saw this beautiful movie several years ago at a Pacific Film Archive showing. We had read the book and found the film followed it faithfully and was gorgeously photographed. We just wish we knew if and when it will ever be made available on DVD or videotape. It was a pleasure to see a film that depicts life in nearly modern Japan with realistic people and locations. We have seen so many "studied" and arty films or medieval Japan that this one has remained a favorite ever since. We were pleased when a beautiful copy of "The Leopard" was released last year and hope that something this classic and beautiful can be made available to viewers.