Taboo

After a 13-year absence, partially due to a life-threatening stroke, master filmmaker Nagisa Oshima returns to the silver screen with this revisionist samurai epic. From his first major film, Cruel Story of Youth to his most notorious work Ai no Korrida, Oshima has coupled the political and the ...more

By setting a tale of homoerotic desire and jealousy in a regiment of macho samurai warriors, lifelong provocateur and instigator of the Japanese New Wave Nagisa Oshima proves that has not mellowed with age. But what's most interesting about the film is how little it actually shocks. The characters, and specifically Captain Hijikata (Takeshi Kitano), the only character to whose inner thoughts we are privy to, through a voice-over narration, seem to find it perfectly natural that an attractive ...more