Rikyu

After seventeen years of silence, director Hiroshi Teshigahara (Woman in the Dunes) returns to moviemaking with this interesting portrait of art vs. power, based on a true story. Set in 16th-century feudal Japan, Rikyu examines the rise of the "cultured" warrior through the relationship between tea master Sen-no Rikyu (Rentaro Mikuni) and ruler Hideyoshi Toyotomi (Tsutomu Yamazaki). Hideyoshi, for whom bloody war and vicious politicking are a way of life, yearns for the simplistic beauty of the "way of tea," as exemplified by the ritual tea ceremony. Rikyu, the tea master, teaches Hideyoshi, and even helps build a gold tea room for him, but eventually the different precepts which govern the two men's actions lead to conflict. When Hideyoshi's local victories go to his head, he begins working on a plan for the invasion of China--a plan which Rikyu openly criticizes. Beautifully filmed, Rikyu is extremely leisurely in pace, and is honestly bound to bore a good percentage of American audiences. Director Teshigahara, who has spent the last decade and more engaged in sculpting, making ceramics, and arranging flowers, is not even remotely interested in making a commercially viable film. But this Japanese A Man For All Seasons will be appreciated by devotees of both Japanese culture and cinema, and it makes for an interesting contrast to, say, Kurosawa's approach to history (which takes place on the battlefield, not in the tea room). Recommended. (R. Pitman)