The Pillow Book

This is a hard book to review on its own for me, as it is the book of one of my most favourite movies, of the same name.Peter Greenaway set out to make a movie very loosely based on the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, a court lady of the Heian period of Japan. This book contains the script of the movie, along with pictures. But it is more than a movie script, it stands alone as a work of art. It is, for me, an exploration of the beauty of the written word, for both what it represents (the story told by the word)and the sheer beauty/art of the words (the calligraphy).It is hard to write about this book (and movie) without sounding like a pretencious tosser! But believe me, if you love art, beauty, the orient, or Ewan McGregor (there are a lot of you out there)you are sure to appreciate something from, if not all of,the Pillow Book.

The genius of Peter Greenaway is found in the pages of this book which provides some of the text glossed over in his edit process of the film, The Pillow Book. Most delightful is the process of this curator, painter, poet, film maker and author as he crafts the film loosley based on the writings of Sei Shonagon. In adding the text of the thirteen poems which are illuminated so vibrantly in the film, a new dimension is added to a film that is a jewel. In particular, the words of the main character, Nagiko to her dead lover, Jerome are in themselves, a poem of immense beauty and visual splendor. The companion to thefilm, it is a must for every library

This is an awesome book. If you are a fan of the movie, this is the perfect companion for it. It has the script for the movie and it has the translations of what is written on the character's bodies. I am a big fan of actor Ewan Mcgregor and this was the perfect addition to my collection. Take my advice buy it.

While it cannot match the visual orgy that characterizes the movie, this book (and what else to call it? names are complicated, in the interplay between cinema and print) serves to reveal some of the skeleton beneath the flesh: anatomy of the limits of language, the ordering of a work concerned with the order we confine our thoughts to. Handy for those who aspire to Greenaway's puzzle-box classicism; quote fodder for those who seek to dissect his repetitive themes of sex, catalogues, fat men, water, and repetition (to name a few); but nothing in this book can do more than hint at the luscious sensuality of wet paint on bare skin, the towering beauty of written characters, and the disaster than comes when we pin all on a medium of communication that is ultimately without value or significance.