Random Thought of the Day

Hiroshi Teshigahara’s 1989 feature Rikyu is a wildly authentic portrait of Sen no Rikyu, the master of the Japanese tea ceremony during the Sengoku Period. While the film bleeds authenticity of 16th century Feudal Japan, it also begs to ask the question concerning whether a film’s sense of realism can be too authentic or too real for its own good. The film is a basically a recreation of a period and an art form that clearly held great significance to Teshigahara, seeing as he himself was master of the Japanese art of flower arrangement, but does a film’s impressive sense of authenticity always equate to a great film?

Christopher Misch, Managing Editor