| Overview: | Based on the nightmarish tale by Ryunosuke Akutagawa--classic novelist and creator of "Rashoman"--"Portrait Of Hell" analyzes the ways in which beings create their own hells on Earth.
Tatsuya Nakadai ("Ran", "Samurai Rebellion", "The Sword Of Doom") portrays the egocentric artist Yoshihide, a Korean painter so obsessed with the artistic truth of what he creates that he claims to be unable to depict any sort of falsehood. So intense is the truth of his art that his works begin to take on a life of their own. His patron is the megalomaniac Japanese daimyo, Hosokawa, a dangerously deranged tyrant who believes in his own divinity and benevolence, regardless of the state of ruin and misery to which he is reducing his land and its people. The tension of their relations is augmented when Hosokawa requests a portrait of Heaven to adorn his temple walls, whilst Yoshihide claims that his experience as a subject of Hosokawa will only allow him to portray Hell.
By the end, many issues of good and evil have been investigated; and what may have seemed clear has merged with a fantasy world that has woven itself into reality.
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