This beautifully realized tale of poor man and his wife -- played by Toshiro Mifune and Ayako Wakao -- who have lost their daughter. The following evening a baby appears with a crystal ball, the image of the dead child. Within days, they find a fortune in good and the child has grown into Yasuko Kawaguchi, the most beautiful girl in Japan. Three noblemen come to court her, and she sets them three impossible tasks.

It's derived from a story by Lady Murasaki, who invented the formal novel. It is beautifully shot and performed, although it was clearly made in the 1980s -- the immense spaceship at the end looks like the alien spacecraft from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. The entire movie offers an unworldly tone that suits its fantastic nature perfectly.

Although Lady Murasaki is often credited with inventing the novel, in fact there had been Chinese novels for a couple of centuries. It was, however, a lower-class phenomenon; epic poetry was the medium for longer, more involved tales, and would remain so for centuries.

The old Japanese folktale of the Bamboo Cutter is here reinterpreted to make Kaguya an alien visitor. Sticking fairly closely to the original 9th century tale of a bamboo cutter finding a mysterious baby girl, this film puts a modern spin onto it by turning the beautiful visitor from the moon into an alien entity lost from a crashed spaceship. Sounds silly, but.... It keeps the original story but "explains" what really happened to our modern sensibilities. I'd have preferred the more traditional folktale ending, but despite the Close Encounters of the Third Kind finale, this film still shines some light into that REALLY alien world, Heian Japan.

I assume that "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter" (also called "Princess Kaguya") is a familiar story to many Japanese people. Here in the States, we have, for the most part, never heard of it. Because of this, I am not sure how it compares to other versions of this story. All I know is that I really enjoyed this film with a modern slant.

The original story was written sometime around the 10th century (at least that's what Wikipedia says) though at the end of the film it says it's set around 790AD. Regardless, it's a very fanciful tale that has been updated a bit to suit modern sensibilities. The film begins with a wood cutter (Toshiro Mifune) finding a baby when he's out in the bamboo forest visiting his daughter's grave. However, this is no ordinary baby--it grows VERY fast and is an outer space baby!! And, more importantly, it looks like his dead daughter but with weird blue eyes (in the original story, she had hair that shone like the moon). She soon grows up--at a highly accelerated rate. And, she's so beautiful that all the men seem to want her--even the Emperor! However, she rebuffs all their advances and sends the suitors off on impossibly crazy tasks--and you assume it's just to get them out of her hair! Later, the film becomes a LOT like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", as her actual people from the Moon are coming back to claim her. This is because given modern sensibilities and special effects, the ship looks a lot like those from Spielberg films--such as "Close Encounters" or "E.T."! It's all the more amazing because the story was written so long ago.

The story is very beautifully filmed, acted and the story is pretty exciting. The only negative is that, inexplicably, the film's credits roll with a song from Peter Cetera (from "Chicago")--music that seems odd given that it's a medieval story! However, this is a very minor quibble and the story is lovely from start to finish.