“Records at the Headquarters” ( The Pillow Book ) - a film by British director Peter Greenaway . Other translations of the film’s title are “Reading for a Coming Dream,” “Pillow Book,” “Pillow Book,” “Novel at Night,” “Bed Reading,” “Chinese Calligraphy,” and the most common “Intimate Diary.” [2] However, the only possible translation is “ Notes at the Head ”, because it is in this translation that we are familiar with the work of the Japanese writer of the late 10th - early 11th century Say-Shonagon “Makura no Sosi”. The original film title is the English translation of the Say-Syonagon book title.
| Notes at the head of the bed | |
|---|---|
| The pillow book | |
 | |
| Genre | drama melodrama erotic |
| Producer | Peter Greenaway |
| Producer | Kes Kasander |
| Author script | Peter Greenaway |
| In the main cast | Vivien wu Ken ogata Ewen macgregor |
| Operator | Sasha Verny |
| Composer | |
| Film company | " Channel Four Films " " Studio Canal + " "Delux Productions" Supported by " Eurimages " Nederlands Filmfonds |
| Duration | 126 min. |
| A country |  France  Great Britain  Netherlands  Luxembourg |
| Tongue | , , , , and |
| Year | 1995 |
| IMDb | ID 0114134 |
The film tells about twenty-eight years from the life of the modern Japanese girl Nagiko, fascinated by the ancient art of calligraphy , who left a cruel husband to Hong Kong , where she experienced a love story with an Englishman-translator. The action of the film is interspersed with inserts with sketches from the court and personal life of Say-Sonogon, based on fragments of the “Notes at the Head”.
"Notes at the head of the bed" is a film containing reflections on calligraphy and hieroglyphs - an ideal language in which the image and the text are one. Greenway created his work, combining two thousand years of calligraphic signs, a hundred years of film language and ten years of computer visual innovations [3] .
According to Greenaway, Japan in the film is “only a figment of the imagination of Europeans — like America at Kafka : Kafka wrote about a country where he had never been” [3] .
The film is unique in its aesthetics: the black and white image alternates with color, the main video sequence is complemented by inserts with a parallel action or image, reinforcing the meaning of the scenes. The film is also unique in the work of artists and costume designers. Brodie Neuenschwander and Yukki Yaura worked on calligraphy.
Content
Story
Every year the father-writer of the girl Nagiko puts a calligraphic birthday greeting on her face. In the evening, when her aunt reads excerpts from the Notes at the Head of the Head, Nagiko sees her father provide sexual services to his publisher, and then hand over the manuscript to the publisher and accept money from him.
The situation is repeated on other Nagiko birthdays. When Nagiko grows up, the publisher offers to give Nagiko a young bow specialist who started out as an apprentice in the publisher’s book factory.
On the birthday of Nagiko, who inherited from her father a passion for calligraphy, her rude husband refuses to make a congratulatory inscription on her face. Nagiko finds solace in reading and keeps a diary in which her husband finds unflattering records about himself and records in languages he does not know. They quarrel, the husband demonstratively burns the books of Nagiko. She leaves the house and moves to Hong Kong.
In Hong Kong, Nagiko first works as a cook's assistant, and also tries to master typewriting. At the same time, she feels like writing on her own body. Nagiko becomes the secretary in the house of high fashion, where she periodically tries on new dresses. In Nagiko notice model looks and now she works on the podium. Thanks to new acquaintances, she manages to make lovers among talented calligraphers who paint her body.
1997 Nagiko is known, journalists are hunting for her. She makes friends with one of them - fascinated by her annoying photographer Hoki. Once in the club she meets an Englishman Jerome [approx. 1] , a translator with knowledge of several languages and a pitiful handwriting. After this meeting, Nagiko arouses the desire to write herself. She paints the body of one of her lovers, and when he falls asleep, she lets Hoki into the house to take pictures of the text she has written. Hawkeye offers to publish the text as a book. Nagiko rewrites the text from the photos on paper, and Hoki refers it to a familiar publisher. When Nagiko receives a letter with a refusal to publish, she goes to the publishing house herself and finds out the publisher of the father. His new lover is Jerome. Wanting to influence the publisher, Nagiko decides to seduce Jerome and falls in love with him.
Jerome agrees to Nagiko's proposal to write a book on his body and show it to the publisher. This is how the first of thirteen books is created. The publisher is satisfied, his assistants rewrite the text for release. In the following days, the publisher does not let Jerome on his own. The jealous Nagiko sneaks into the publisher's house at night and sees him having sex with Jerome. Nagiko finds volunteer men in the club and sends the Publisher of the Innocence, the Book of an Idiot, the Book of Powerlessness and the Exhibitionist Book one by one to the publisher. Jerome notices that the publisher is no longer interested in him, and in repentance goes to Nagiko. She does not respond to a knock at the door and Jerome's screams, closes the windows and cries.
Hoki offers Jerome to portray suicide in the spirit of "Romeo and Juliet", and gives him pills, swallowed which, Jerome must portray a suicide attempt. Drunk Jerome comes to Nagiko’s house when she isn’t at home, swallows pills, drinks a glass of ink by mistake and lies down on the bed. Arriving home and finding Jerome, Nagiko thinks that he is asleep, and begins to write on it the "Book of the Lover." But ink is poured from Jerome’s mouth, and Nagiko realizes that he is dead. Jerome is buried. Nagiko burns his manuscripts.
The publisher, having learned about the death of Jerome, conducts a secret exhumation of the body, from which they remove the skin covered with the “Book of the Lover” and sew it into a clamshell book. Nagiko writes and alternately sends the Publisher the Book of the seducer, the Book of Youth, the Book of Secrets, the Book of Silence, the Book of the Betrayer and the Book of False Starts, each of which contains something disturbing to the publisher. The last, thirteenth, self-exposing "Book of the Dead", Nagiko writes on the body of a professional killer. After reading the book, the publisher wraps himself in the pages of the Book of the Lover and readily stands in front of the murderer, who cuts his throat with a razor.
Nagiko, who returned to Japan, puts the Book of the Lover on the bottom of the pot in which he plants the bonsai tree. On the day of her 28th birthday and the year of the 1000th anniversary of the “Notes at the Head of the Head”, Nagiko picks up her child from Jerome and puts on her face a calligraphic inscription that her father made to her.
Cast
- Nagiko Kiyohara no Motosuke Sei Shonagon - Vivian Wu / Nagiko Kiyohara no Motosuke Say-Shonagon
- Publisher / The Publisher - Yoshi Oida / Yoshi Oida
- Father / The Father - Ken Ogata
- Aunt & The Maid - Hideko Yoshida / Hideko Yoshida
- Jerome / Jerome - Ewan McGregor
- Mother / The Mother - Judy Ongg / Judy Ongg
- Male / The Husband - Ken Mitsuishi
- Hoki / Hoki - Yutaka Honda / Yutaka Honda
- Jerome's Mother - Barbara Lott
- Jerome's Sister - Lynne Langdon / Jerome's Sister
Film crew
- Written and directed by Peter Greenway
- Produced by Kees Kasander
- Operator - Sasha Verny
- Artists - Andre Patmen, Wilbert van Dorp, Amy Wada
- Montage - Peter Greenaway and Chris Wyatt
Awards
- 1997 Seattle International Film Festival Award
- Best Direction - Peter Greenway
- 1997 London Film Society Critics Award
- Actor of the Year - Ewan McGregor
- 1996 Catalan International Film Festival Award
- Best Film - Peter Greenway
- Best cinematography - Sasha Verni
Links
- Catherine Glod. Opposition of the tongue-body in Peter Greenaway's film “Notes at the Head” (inaccessible link)
- Movie Reviews (eng.)
- "Notes at the head of the bed" (English) on the Internet Movie Database
- Intimate diary (eng.) On the site allmovie
Notes
- Дж The name Jerome is an allusion to Saint Jerome of Stridon ( English Saint Jerome ), a translator of the Bible .
Sources
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 Freebase - Google data upload .
- ↑ Kuznetsov, Sergey. Notes at the head. The Art of Cinema , 1997, No. 9, p. 24
- ↑ 1 2 Greenway, Peter. The ideal movie model. The Art of Cinema , 1997, No. 9, p. 27.