Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Still contemporary after all these years, November 12, 2007
This is the only game in town if you want to see classic Japanese Bunraku short of a trip to Japan. This performance is abridged, and there are no long shots that allow you to take in the whole minimalist staging of singer, musician, and puppeteers, but the essence of the form is still engaging. The play by Chikamatsu is best presented in English by the Donald Keene translation and commentary (also avialable at Amazon The Major Plays of Chikamatsu), and I recommend the book as a libretto for enhancing the viewing of the video. Keene does a very good job of clarifying the historical context of Chikamatsu's work in a way that reinforces the timeless nature of the Bunraku art, and he even makes a pretty good stab at translating Chikamatu's puns and clever Japanese language that is missed in the video sub-titles. (I have the VHS version of this, but I understand the DVD is made from the same Marty Gross film.)
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Better Than Nothing? I'm Not Sure., September 21, 2008
During the year I lived in Japan, there were two things I adored enough to counterbalance any frustration I felt with learning that impossible language and any isolation I felt at being a "gai jin", an outsider. Those things were the gardens and the bunraku - the musical puppet theater, a "Living National Treasure" conserved only in Osaka and on one small island. The bunraku does travel to barbarous outposts now and then - Tokyo, Berkeley Ca, Cambridge MA - and when it comes near me, anywhere on Earth, I rush to buy tickets. But if you really want to experience Japan's most sophisticated theater form, you have to make a pilgrimage to Osaka.
Chikamatsu, the author of this Lover's Exile and most other bunraku texts, is the Shakespeare of Japan in terms of his stature, and the bunraku likewise has the stature of the Shakespearean stage. A funny thought, eh? Here's how it works: the 'stage' is a pit, about the size of an orchestra pit, with extremely stylized and cleverly manipulated backdrops. The puppeters stand and walk in the 'trenches' of the stage, visible only from the waist up. They are clad and masked in matte black robes, all except the greatest masters, who are allowed to expose their faces. The puppets are child-sized, extremely 'artful' in construction and elaborately costumed. The puppet faces are immobile. Each puppet is operated by two or more puppeteers, who are plainly in sight behind the puppets. Meanwhile, in an alcove beside the stage, a man sits cross-legged and chants the story that the puppets are enacting, using weird vocal inflections to suggest dialogue. His chant is accompanied by the strumming of a 'shamisen' player sitting next to him. Not all the chanters are old men, but the 'proper' style is clearly an old man's roughened voice. European/American music lovers wll not immediately enjoy this bunraku chant any more than first-time diners in Japan enjoy sea urchin gonads as sushi. It's definitely a 'learned taste,' Japanese classical music of any sort, but once you learn it, it's quite addicting. That's why I rushed to buy this bunraku DVD - the only one on the market - the moment I discovered it.
But it doesn't work. The lighting for cameras and the flat depth of field destroy the illusion that the puppeteers aren't really there. The stage looks cluttered, crowded. The movements of the puppets seem awkward and static. The close-ups of the little painted wooden heads DON'T work like close-ups of Hollywood actors, showing emotions. How silly for the director to suppose they would! Yet when you sit in the bunraku theater, the whole staging is magically graceful. Those little unmoving faces somehow seem to change and light up with expressions. Your eyes never leave the stage - the whole sweep of it - while the wailing voices of the chanters and the clanging of the shamisen surround you and the puppets in a minature world of drama. The Japanese viewers around you, by the way, are likely to be picnicking as they watch, or straining their eyes to follow a printed text, since they can't really understand the archaic language of the chant much better than you can.
So... Will this DVD evoke the truly exotic artifice of bunraku, and give you at least a taste of the experience? I think not. I think it will merely serve to convince you that you wouldn't like it anyway. Save your money. Fly directly to Osaka, bypassing Tokyo except as a literary concept. Get a room in Kyoto, in as old-fashioned a 'minshiku' as you can find. Spend a week lingering - LINGERING! - in the temple gardens. Actually, you'll need to come at least twice, in spring and fall, to begin to understand Japanese gardening. Then, when the gardens have saturated your senses, take the fast train to Osaka and attend the bunraku. You'll need reservations.
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by Donald Keene
DVD ~ Kihachiro Kawamoto
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