Word: tableau
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...many ways it might have recalled the stark menace of a Goya tableau. The Deputies in Spain's 350-seat lower house were halfway through their vote on a new government when the heavy rococo doors of the Cortes, the country's parliament in the center of Madrid, burst open. In rushed a dozen armed attackers, most of them wearing olive drab parkas and blue jeans. In the marble corridors outside the chamber, some 200 uniformed men nervously fingered their weapons as they sealed off the exits. The invaders fired their submachine guns at the ceiling to drown...
KAGEMUSHA begins with a simple tableau: a Japanese feudal lord, Shingen (Tatsya Nakada), sits in the center of the screen: on the left is his brother (Tsutomu Yamakazi); in the lower right corner is a thief (Tatsuya Nakada), whom the brother has plucked from a crucifix because he bears a strong resemblance to Shingen. An austere composition, the lord virtually immobile, the camera immobile, the long scene played out in one shot. Later, after the lord. Shingen, has been assassinated, we learn that he was called the Moutain, that the Moutain did not move, and therein was his strength...
Which is really what this film is all about--a long slow tableau of a beautiful man and a beautiful woman doing beautiful things. But it is contrived, painting a tortured tableau. This is not a fantasy out of Bronte, it's a photo essay out of Penthouse. Jane Seymour, as the actress Collier loves, is hauntingly beautiful--but she spends most of the movie in soft focus, always on the verge of letting her hair down, ringlets playing about her ears, draped in lace. That old fantasy of Victorian women with all that fancy lingerie. Set against Reeves' incompetence...
...Pope John Paul II, had just finished a eulogy, praising Romero as a "beloved, peacemaking man of God" and prophesying that "his blood will give fruit to brotherhood, love and peace." Suddenly, the outdoor funeral service in the center of El Salvador's capital was transformed into a tableau of horror: exploding hand bombs, wild gunfire, terrified crowds stampeding in panic. Before it was over, 35 people had been killed; 185 others had been hospitalized with serious injuries. "It was pure savagery against defenseless, humble people," lamented a mourner, Bishop Eamon Casey of Galway, Ireland. "There is something vile...
Still, Herman has not come back from the Front; he is believed dead. Then one day, as Maria and Bill are about to dive into bed, Heman materializes in the bedroom doorway. Lowitsch, iron-jawed, taciturn, renders the strange tableau one of the most powerful scenes in the movie. He tussels with the black soldier, and Maria clobbers Bill--fatally--with a bottle...