Onmyoji (2001)

He's not even human

Abe no Seimei is sort of the Japanese equivalent of Merlin. He lived a thousand years ago, was an onmyodo pecialist, and was supposed to have been the offspring of a man and a fox demon.

So it's not exactly surprising that "Onmyoji" is soaked in fantasy, with shapeshifting butterflies, ghosts, immortals, evil sorcerers, demons and armies of ogres. It has some distinctly hokey special effects (is that a feathered Muppet?), but the complex plot is kept afloat by solid direction, and some truly brilliant acting from Mansai Nomura as the foxy lead character.

Heian-era Japan is infested with demons, monsters and spirits, which are regularly dealt with by the Onmyoji (sort of astrologer/sorcerers). The greatest of these: Abe no Seimei, whose magical heritage gives him a distinct advantage over his fellows.

Hiromasa no Minomoto (Hideaki Ito) is initially nervous when he's sent to fetch Seimei, for some friend who is being haunted by an angry ghost. But the earnest young nobleman is impressed by Seimei's power, insight and deft handling of delicate cases. So when the emperor's newborn son is suddenly possessed by a demon, Hiromasa immediately comes to Seimei for help.

With the help of a strange immortal woman, Seimei saves the day. But his archrival Doman (Hiroyuki Sanada) is still working behind the scenes, using spells and demons in assassination attempts, and even trying to have Seimei arrested for treason. And despite his immense power, even Seimei does not suspect the malignant magics that Doman is going to use....

Though it has a lot of the trappings of cliche fantasy -- evil sorcerers, vengeful ghosts, a plucky young hero -- "Onmyoji" is a pretty unique experience. It's soaked in Japanese folklore, costumes and history, but at its heart it's really just about the growing friendship between two very different men, and the ways that Hiromasa's innocent outlook affects the jaded, languid Seimei.

Obviously for that, you need some excellent actors, and Nomura gives a mischievous, lazily sly performance as the vaguely vulpine Seimei. But he can handle more dramatic scenes, such as Seimei's childlike panic when Hiromasa is shot. And Ito plays the naive Hiromasa as a young, romantic, idealistic nobleman (also loosely based on a real person), whose bright personality is enough to endear him to Seimei. By the climax, their odd friendship feels real and solid.

And director Yojiro Takita does an excellent job bringing this slow-moving storyline to life. Juggling fantasy, horror, romance and political intrigue at a slow pace isn't an easy task, but Takita manages it quite well. He unwinds the plot slowly, peppering it with lots of supernatural plots and nasty little ghoulies and ghosties. But about three-thirds of the way through the plot, things suddenly pick up -- and we're in for battle scenes and magical duels.

And Takita has an eye for bringing medieval Japan alive -- he weaves in scenes of pure beauty (Hiromasa playing his flute for his melancholy "lady of the moon") in with the horror. And that horror is pretty diverse -- we have everything from a lady ghost cuddling her ex to the exorcism of a veiny many-headed scarlet demon in Seimei's garden. Even odder, all this is handled in a matter-of-fact way, as if there's nothing too unusual about hauntings and demons.

Problems? Well, some of the special effects are terribly hokey, such as Doman's feathered familiar (hello, animatronics!) and the corkscrew ogre fangs. When one character started chewing on Hiromasa with those funky teeth, it was hard not to laugh.

"Onmyoji" suffers from some distinctly silly special effects, but the bulk of this solid fantasy movie is all good -- lots of Japanese folklore, a touch of horror, and a very foxy anti-hero. June 19, 2008

Onmyoji

Gave it away as a gift; the one who received it, said it was a good movie, good story line, and wonderfully done. I rated it according to her response, she wants to get one for a relative. March 10, 2008

A beautiful love story, Edo-period style

I am a HUGE fan of Japanese historical-period films, and I absolutely LOVE this movie.

I think it is so much better than the sequel, Onmyoji II, and do not understand why it received an inferior rating. This film has a touch of the fantasy seen in "Crouching Tiger", but this movie has a happy ending! (and is Japanese).

The cinematography is excellent, the costumes are phenomenal, the story line is heart-rending with multiple love stories intertwined, mixed with power struggles and the supernatural. What more could one ask for?

I love this film a little more each time I see it, and whole heartedly recommend it to anyone. September 30, 2006

Some interesting insights into Japanese culture

This is obviously not a movie for everyone. If you go into this movie expecting it to be like a western fantasy movie then you'll be disappointed.

As a number of other reviewers have pointed out. This movie is meant to be stylized, there are many references to traditional Japanese dramatic styles (including both Kyogen and Noh) particularly in the manner in which the characters act.

Translating classical genres into modern contexts such as the monster movie is always a bit fraught. On balance I liked what director Takita Yojiro did with this movie despite it's clunkiness for the modern viewer.

The stand out for me was the acting. Nomura Mansai was particularly good as Abe no Seimei. I thought his "foxy" persona was spot on. I also liked Ito Hideaki's flute-playing nobleman sidekick. The two of them have great rapport together.

For people interested in Japanese culture there are several other really interesting aspects to the movie (as pointed out to me by my colleague Alex Golub of Golublog and Savage Minds fame):

Firstly, the whole issue of where demons come from and how to destroy them. This revolves around the issue of social harmony. When harmony in relationships is upset through anger, envy, jealousy or whatever, the negative emotions create the demonic aspect of the person which then takes on a life of its own. Exorcising the demon primarily involves the restoration of harmonious relationships (and not the intervention of "good" as is the case in Christian understandings of exorcism).

The other interesting aspect of the movie to me was the way in which magic is a function of words and movement performed properly. For me, the climatic fight scene was great because it was so clearly NOT about weapons skills or direct combat at all, but rather the use of spiritual skill and intelligence. Seimei's laying out of the pentagram was a marvellous peice of film-making and captured the spirit of East Asian martial arts philosophy beautifully.

The last example of something thought-provoking in the movie I'll give (though by no means the last thing in the movie) was the way in which the director forced you to confront the boundaries between the real and the "unreal": the use of paper dolls and butterflies as the "real" forms of Seimei's women servants (and at one point, himself) was a great example of this, and added layers of meaning to other instances of this motif in other Japanese films. For novices to Japanese cinema like myself, a good example would be the paper birds that attack Haku the dragon in Miyazaki's "Spirited Away".

Overall, I liked this movie a great deal. It's worth seeing in its own right but as a way to learn more about traditional Japanese culture, it's worth even more stars.

January 30, 2006

Alright fantasy fare

There's an evil prince and a good prince, aided and abetted by evil and good wizards. Butterflies turn into beautiful maidens. Beautiful maidens either live forever young (forget it - got to eat merman sushi to qualify), turn into delicate paper dolls, or, if the wizard is prankish, turn back into butterflies.

Our hero, Hiromasa, is a young, junior grade wizard, a wise man in waiting, an onmyoji in ONMYOJI. Spends most of his time playing flute solos in front of closed carriage of a mopishly beautiful, eternally youthful maiden. Falls in love with her, apparently by osmosis - how do you fall in love with a sigh machine, anyway? Hiromasa's boss is Seimei, a yin-yang master of the complex spells with a strange sense of humor who may, or may not, help the Mikado when his newborn son is threatened by the evil machinations of boss bad wizard Doson.

With plenty of supernatural elements, the plot is both busy and superficial. The characters are pretty shallow, and production values are campishly low. There's a supernatural bird and a sick animatronic baby that look like they were purchased at a dollar store. ONMYOJI recalls the spirit, if not the particulars, of the old Gene Autry and Roy Rogers programmers of my Saturday morning television youth. No central love story, or much graphic violence. Target audience, adolescents. With its indifferent acting, stylized and unambitious action it seems more or less the same as those bygone cookie cutter westerns. Some of the special effects are laughably bad.

ONMYOJI was comfortably interesting, an unusual flight of fantasy. Good Saturday morning fare, safe for the whole family.
November 24, 2005

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