Film School: 5 films by Nagisa Oshima you should check out

"Gohatto” (1999)

A few years after suffering a massive stroke, Oshima gets back into the director's chair with this movie about gay samurais. Homosexuality has long been a part of any military. Heck, the ancient Greeks encouraged it to build morale. But to portray it onscreen in the hypermasculine world of the samurai was subversive. Imagine having Clint Eastwood make goo-goo eyes at Eli Wallach in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," and you get ... more 

"Gohatto” (1999)

A few years after suffering a massive stroke, Oshima gets back into the director's chair with this movie about gay samurais. Homosexuality has long been a part of any military. Heck, the ancient Greeks encouraged it to build morale. But to portray it onscreen in the hypermasculine world of the samurai was subversive. Imagine having Clint Eastwood make goo-goo eyes at Eli Wallach in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," and you get the picture. Set in 1865 as the country is coming out of its 300-year-long self-imposed isolation and as the samurais' grip on power starts to slip, the movie centers on a samurai militia, the Shinsengumi, looking to thwart the country's sudden, rapid change. When Kano, an effeminate lad with long hair and a thirst for blood, is recruited into the group, his androgynous beauty soon raises the blood pressure of his lonely comrades. As in "Mr. Lawrence," their repressed, frustrated longings soon translate into bloody violence. less