Didier Decoin

I watched this a decade and some change ago. I recalled liking some moments in it, and so when I found it cheaply I bought it on a whim to rewatch. My memory was about right, it turned out.

There are indeed several great moments here and there, but unfortunately they do not combine to a particularly engrossing whole. The series spends too much time on personal drama to be able to follow the warfare to the detail needed to understand and thus invest emotionally in the ups and downs, and simultaneously too much time on the wars and battles to properly pay off the character relationship drama aspect. The battles are mostly showing off their budget, never truly giving a sense of who is doing what to whom, what tactics are working and which are not, and yet going on for quite a while despite failing to involve the viewer. Similarly, the political intrigue is always hinted at, with clever looks, veiled threats and biting remarks, but it's all for show, as the series immediately returns to the (underdeveloped) relationship dramas and the (shallow) war epic scenes. Thus, "Napoléon" ends up teasing an intrigue thriller we never get, indulging in detailed family affairs soap that mostly (there are exceptions here, thankfully) fizzles out without fanfare, and providing hefty amounts of glorious spectacle with little to none of the depth and detail that would have made such spectacle exciting.

The production quality, however, is splendid. The actors are great (Malkovich is particularly delicious, but there are many here who get to shine), the costumes, the sets, all wonderful. Some of the dialogue is quite decent, too, and the pacing, despite my laundry list of complaints above, is actually not too bad. But in the end, to me, this show is alas, somewhat less than the sum of its parts.… (meer)

Ugh, what a disappointment.

I had high hopes for the this book - it ticked off so many of my interests:
- Japanese history
- Japanese history that included village life not just aristocracy/'Tale of Genji' world
- Discussion of things like nature, fragrance and colour
- Heian fashion

But it was...not good. For various reasons. Main ones are:
The author is reported to have researched 14 years to write this book. And it shows. There is so much superfluous material in this book that add nothing to the story but the writer could just not let go (and an editor didn't have the guts to cut). Add to that the ostentatious use of Japanese terms that are footnoted. Due to a mix of study and experience I actually knew what a lot of them meant but didn't find the use of them added to the story (and found it weird that he chose to include some terms in the original Japanese and yet translate others). It just looked like another example of 'look at me, I studied this strange and exotic culture, let me show you' rather than 'I decided to leave these in the original language to add verisimilitude to the story'. Frankly I would have found footnotes about the plants a lot more useful (thank-you built in Kindle dictionaries).
- The sex scenes. As many other reviewers point out, they are cringeworthy. I am not a prude - my list of favourite literature includes books like 'Story of O' so I don't mind a sex scene if it is well written and has a place in the story. The sex scenes in this book are neither well written, or in most places add to the story. They are so bad I really can't even think that it is a problem with the translation in to English.

There are some interesting parts to this story - I particularly liked how Decoin attempted to explore the headspace of someone coming from an isolated village and how their view of the world would be shaped by that, to the point of not having words for many of the new things she experienced. But that is not enough to save this book. It is, in short, not very good. Which is a shame as there was a lot of potential behind it.… (meer)