There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Sarah Miles deserved far, far better than this film. Her performance is head and shoulders above any others in the movie, and this becomes evident 15 minutes into it. Her performance is the only reason I can give this film a rating higher than one star. Kris Kristofferson plays her love interest, in a performance that redefines the words laconic and listless.Possible Spoilers: Miles plays a lonely widow whose husband who died after a long illness, with a troubled, sullen teen son (naturally). She meets Kris Kristofferson, playing a sailor with no sense that he is one, and instantly drops all of her British reserve to fall in lust with an American stranger who is completely passive and has absolutely no personality. Sarah Miles literally carries every scene between her and Kristofferson on her own shoulders; it's like watching a champion dancer dance with a mannequin, except that you can at least prop up and pose a mannequin. For some bizarre reason, Kristofferson, who underplays every role he has, decided to underplay this performance even more, as if that would give him some sort of quiet American strength. Instead, it gives him a quiet lethargy that puts the energy right through the floor. I have to wonder if Miles actually said to Kristofferson at some point during rehearsals: "Kris, you are going to give me more energy than that during the take, aren't you?" If the director actually said to Kristofferson "less energy, be more subtle", that was the Wrong direction for Kristofferson. It's like saying to Robin Williams "Robin! Be more manic, and much higher energy!" Naturally, the woman's son resents the hell out of Kristofferson, and like most movie children of single mothers, is under the influence of the worst element he can find, a hateful little psychopath that likes blowing seagulls' heads off with firecrackers, mutilating cats, etc, without adults around them ever noticing. Without a strong father figure around, the movie argues, male children will immediately fall into gangs or worse.The end of the movie is out of a Stephen King novel, and does not fit in with the rest of the story at all. There seems to be no moral or statement to the film that I could find. In fact, it seems to go out of its way to avoid one. If you had to find a "moral" in it, it would seem to be, stay in the Navy and never retire, or you will deserve to be cut into tiny pieces in short order, as your just punishment. Why? I have no idea. I guess the sea is a jealous mistress. Like, Fatal Attraction jealous.Which is especially odd, as there are No Sea Metaphors or allusions to the sea in this film! (This IS adapted from a Japanese story by a famous but rather disturbed author, who committed suicide as a protest against modern society, but even in terms of the Samuri tradition, the film makes no coherent statement; even one that we could disagree with.) The film left me with a feeling that I had been subjected to three levels of abuse: one, a slow-moving (and I mean, Slow-Moving) morality tale with no moral at the end, two, Kris Kristofferson's energy-sucking performance that seemed to suck the vitality out of me as I watched it, and lastly, the abuse of Sarah Miles, who gave an Oscar-worthy performance in a film that was not worthy of her, and gave her no energy to work with; which means her work was twice-heroic. If she was not in this film, no-one would remember it on any level; and out of respect for her, no-one should.

The movie is indeed an adaptation of a novel by Yukio Mishima. Just to clarify, the novel is not an obscure work. Mishima is amongst Japan's most famous writers and was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature three times. Also, the plot of the original Japanese story does not happen in a remote fishing village; it happens in Yokohama, which is one of Japan's largest cities. Lastly, it does not happen in feudal Japan, a fact that would be very evident had someone read the book.Now that that's been said, I've watched the movie since I very much enjoyed the novel. While I agree with most comments concerning the movie itself, I actually very much enjoyed the ending. Not only would have supplying an ending would have been taking too much liberty, but also it allows the viewer to imagine what would happen. Furthermore, to challenge another commenter, this sort of ending does work in movies and was a common motif of films during this era. Some other notable movies with endings similar to this include Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation" and "Parallax View."

The film can be faulted for at least appearing to give too much to the mother/sailor side of the conflict, an appealingly sexy but eventually unconvincing romantic fantasy. The boy Chief is the other distracting trap for the viewer - he's the embryo of a crypto-scientific nerd who has less in common with Nietzsche than with a certain type of sclerotic, egotistical academic you'll find slowly going berserk at a second rate college.Importantly, the Chief doesn't quite "get it" about his underrated disciple Jonathan and the Sailor. Jonathan is, or should be, the focus of the film because he is a more interestingly conflicted, assertive, and intellectually cogent character than any of the others - he is the Mishima surrogate, who tries to reconcile and meld the Chief's perfectionism with the sailor's fictional attraction. That requires canceling out the unacceptably artless "return" of the sailor, which is the "fall from grace." Restoring aesthetic grace to the Sailor is the shocking concluding project. Keep your mind's eye on Jonathan - even while heeding the siren calls of competing sex and death.The casting is very good. Miles has the dreamy look and self-deluding spunk of a romance novel heroine. Kristofferson always plays "himself" and in this film his noble antique head, wooden cowboy self-assurance, and gravel-voiced platitudes work perfectly to attract susceptible but discerning Jonathan in the first go around and disgust him in the second. The young actor Jonathan was a real find - able to play the submissive but also a live spark when called upon - his is the subtlest but most important role in the film.

Someday, a good movie will be made about an adolescent boy with growing pains who develops sexual feelings for his mother (a situation that likely occurs in real life more than we care to realize), but this film isn't it. The boy in the movie is sick and scary, and it is impossible to feel anything for him except revulsion.I am puzzled by the positive responses the film has gotten, both here at IMDb and over the years. People say the film is erotic? Only if you aren't very discriminating. True eroticism is achieved only when the viewer can feel some empathy for either the characters or the sexual situation, which I did not feel here. Perhaps a genuine erotic scene could be made in which a boy spies on his mother while she masturbates, but not in this movie. The characters are too much of a turn-off. Scenes seem to exist just for shock effect, including the finale. I felt grubby after watching it, and wanted to take a shower.Yes, I know it isn't all just the movie---it was based on a Yukio Mishima novel, which was set in feudal Japan. Maybe it worked better in that setting, but I doubt it. So, sorry everyone. If you like the film, more power to you, but I am puzzled by your reaction.