Quick Review #74: The Legend & Butterfly (movie)

Title: The Legend & Butterfly / レジェンド&バタフライ

Rating: 6 / 10

Recommended for: 

Those who want to see a fictitious love story featuring historical figures and/or are fans of Kimura Takuya and Ayase Haruka

*Currently showing on Amazon Prime Video (subject to geographical restrictions)

Liked:

- Given that there is very little information about Nouhime and her marriage with Oda Nobunaga, the story was no doubt more fictitious than factual. On the other hand, this allowed the scriptwriter to have more leeway in fleshing out Nouhime and be more "adventurous" in crafting the love story. While the focus of the movie was ultimately their love story over more than 3 decades, their lives were no doubt intertwined with the historical events especially Oda's attempt at unifying Japan so there had to be scenes featuring the key events of the Sengoku era. 

The good thing was that these historical scenes did not overwhelm the main plot so I liked the fine balance between both aspects of the story. Although the historical inaccuracies or fictitious parts in the love story e.g. Oda and Nouhime were depicted to have "divorced" for 7 years in the movie might not go down well with some people especially those who are very familiar with their history, I think that the movie still stayed on course to deliver what it intended.

- It was obvious that a lot of money and effort was put into the set and costume design so the movie was a visual feast on the whole. Some scenes did look a bit more CG-style than the others though.

- The later part or should I say the last hour or so of the movie was where you would see the best emotional acting from Kimura and Ayase in the entire story.

Disliked: 

- The problem with a story spanning decades of someone's life is that, can the actor/actress pull off the look from young to old? Would it have been better to get a younger or older actor to "share" the role? The issue here is, Oda and Nouhime were said to have gotten married at the young ages of 16 and 15, or at the very least, as teenagers. Obviously, it was a stretch to see Kimura act "young" and behave like that as the teenage Oda. On the other hand, Ayase's look as Nouhime from young to old hardly saw much transition (at most the clothes and her makeup) so it was difficult to reconcile the age Nouhime was supposedly at with how she looked onscreen. I thought this was quite difficult for the viewer to get immersed into the story because of the mismatch in looks and age.

Perhaps this was also why that I found myself enjoying their acting more towards the end of the movie when their real ages and looks finally aligned with what they were supposed to be at in the story.

- While the movie had a stream of capable actors in the sidelines, I felt that they were not given the room to show their full potential. In particular, Ito Hideaki and Nakatani Miki's roles were supposedly important but then this didn't show through in the movie. Given that I had read about Nakatani's preparations for this role in her book, I found it difficult to understand how it could be that she only appeared so few times in this movie. Perhaps it was the post-editing that left out a lot of their scenes but still, it just felt like a waste of talent to me.

- I don't know if anyone had the same thought as me but the "diversion" in the final stage of the movie simply reminded me of a mash-up of the movies "Titanic" and "Pirates of the Carribean". While I get the intention of these scenes were meant to show the "what ifs" when there was a fairytale ending, I just thought that the style of this narrative was so different from the rest of the film and felt so out-of-place.