Dear self: read these product descriptions more closely.

[meganbmoore]

Sooo...Kenneth Branagh's 2006 adaptation of As You Like It is about peaceful, intellectual white Europeans in 19th century Japan, learning all about the exotic natives and their exotic culture.  *Summary of opening text.*

In the opening scene, the peaceful white people are having a solemn party when scary, violent samurai attack, beat up an old dude (we get two clips of this, to make sure we don't miss the scary samurai beating up a helpless old man), and throw them out to wander the cold forest like the poor, abused, helpless souls they are.

Sigh.

ETA:  But then I turned on Life, and the ep. has Christina Hendricks and Victoria Pratt, so it wasn't a total Netflix Failure day.

Comments

[eisen]

... what. What in the god damn hell.

I've never watched AS YOU LIKE IT, I have heard next to nothing about it, I never even was interested enough to look very much into it (I don't like the play), the most I knew about it is that some people didn't consider it his best work, and I am frankly bewildered that the most important thing people thought to inform potential viewers about it in lieu of having the story right in front of them is that "well, his directing work wasn't very good" (no, that is literally all I ever heard of it, from three different people) instead of, well, HOLY FUCKSTICKS, THAT.

I'm unsurprised but disgusted by the racism blatantly reveled in on screen here, but I am kind of baffled that anybody thought it wasn't worth mentioning the movie sucked because of the racism and instead couched their dislike in terms of Branagh's "weak direction". Because, seriously, what. KIND OF HARD TO MISS, I WOULD THINK.

[starlady]

WHAT. Oh jebus.

Well, yeah, cross that one off my life list.