Die Geschichte vom Prinzen Genji

I may have had a real disadvantage with Tetsuji Takeshi's Genji monogatari (Tale of Genji) in that the 1000 year old story it's based on is a complete blank for me, probably unlike the vast majority of its intended audience who would be much more familiar with it as a cultural phenomenon. A lot of ground is covered by the story with little or utterly impenetrable apparent motivations for the characters, and it was hard to keep up with the philandering royal Genji as he bounces from woman, however earnest he seems. Also a hindrance is a choice to stage the 'action' with the pace and styling of a noh drama which, for me, rendered the whole production to be plodding and completely bloodless by western standards.

That said, I'm not sure this would be a very good movie even to a thoroughly domestic crowd as the pacing is nearly lethal in a cinematic sense. Genji may have some admirable characteristics but they are absent from the film I was watching and it was hard to identify or sympathize with him. A few ghost sequences added a minor degree of interest but were sort of random and confusing. Again, I'm probably missing a lot by not being plugged into the whole Genji universe but this movie didn't really whet my appetite for a deeper dive.