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| Taboo |
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  (8/10)
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Runtime: 100 |
| Public Rating: 6.92 (13 votes) |
Director: Nagasi Oshima |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Foreign/Suspense |
Year: 1999 |
| Writer(s): Nagasi Oshima |
| Reviewed by: Goatdog |
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Originally released in 1999 but just now showing up in US theaters, "Taboo" (originally Gohatto) is the best darned gay samurai murder-mystery I have ever seen (actually, the only one...). It is not only one of a kind, it is a great samurai movie and a great movie, period. It takes place in the Shogun era of Japan's history, not long before the first emissaries from the West showed up. Set in the most powerful dojo in Japan, the story concerns the problems created when a beautiful, androgynous samurai played by Ryuhei Matsuda joins up. He and his fellow inductee, Tadanobu Asano, are the best fighters out of a crop of students, and they are chosen for full membership.
The attractive Matsuda catches the eye of more than one of the other samurai. It is no surprise, since he is a very beautiful and feminine man, and the samurai don't see a lot of the opposite sex. One of my favorite things about the film is the fact that homosexuality, while not being openly accepted, was not really frowned upon by the masters of the dojo. I don't know how historically accurate it was, but their discussion of the sexual orientation of their students was limited to statements like "I didn't know he leaned that way." It was refreshing to see a movie where the fact that characters were homosexual wasn't a big deal.
Matsuda becomes the object of Asano's affection, despite his protestations. Several of the other samurai also woo him, including at least one high-ranking soldier. This leads to major problems when this officer is slain in the street by an unknown man. Witnesses report that the killer was wearing the insignia of Matsuda's dojo, so the investigation turns inward.
Meanwhile, the leader of the dojo, played by Japanese action star Beat Takeshi, must deal with the murder as well as retribution on another dojo for insulting one of the high-ranking officers who happens to be a poor swordsman. To deal with the problem of Matsuda, he enlists another officer to convince the young man to go with him to a brothel; Matsuda misunderstands and thinks he is being courted.
The film has a wonderful ending that can be analyzed in two conflicting but equally valid ways. It is tied to a scene early in the film where an officer is going to be executed for borrowing money under the guise of borrowing it for the dojo (the samurai have a lot of interesting and ridiculous rules that the film presents as elaborate title cards throughout). I like that the ending is not so ambiguous that you have no idea what happened, but that you have two opposite choices, both of which make sense. Being too ambiguous is often a way in which the filmmakers refuse to make any decisions, but with this you can tell they knew what they were doing. This is Oshima's first film in eight years; he is the creator of the notorious 1976 film In the Realm of the Senses, which features explicit sex and a certain severed body part and was banned nearly worldwide upon release.
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