"The person whose name is written here shall die", the MRT posters, TV commercials and cinema advertorials echo like there's no tomorrow. Watching Death Note, I realised that the advertisements were a huge injustice to the substance of the movie and the wit of the story creators, but necessarily so.
Student Light picks up a notebook, entitled Death Note, on the streets one rainy night. The book allows its owner to kill by writing the victim's name on the book while picturing his or her face in the owner's mind. Light decides to use his powers against criminals and suspects, and soon police investigators begin to crack down on him. The story soon escalates into a battle of tactics between Light and the police, particularly genius investigator L.
Having seen the advertisements, one would probably be misled into thinking that the movie expounds on the terror people would be subjected to with the Death Note.
Yet, the focus is really on how cleverly L narrows the identity of the killer down to one person, and how Light employs an elaborate set of methods to avoid capture. In fact, the creators of the story plays with the audience's minds. They reveal the seemingly infallible moves of one side, and then show how this move is countered (and at the same time impressing the audience). It seems that as Light becomes more adept at using the Death Note to kill and avoid capture, and as L gains more and more information about the killer, the tactics get better and better, engaging the audience in the story.
However, the notion of the Death Note is inherently more worthy of attention than the tactical aspect of the movie. Thus, it seems that to attract attention, showing what the movie is really about was secondary in the promotional team's considerations.
Brilliance in tactics could have manifested itself in myriad mediums. By choosing the death of others as the medium (Death Note, not, say, Paralysis Note), the creators mirror Kindaichi Case Files in approach. Story lines of both stories escalate the stakes of the game to life itself, in an attempt to make the story more interesting. However, this brings the unpleasant side-effects of disturbing some, and deterring those averse to themes of death altogether.
The end of the movie presents itself as rather inconclusive. Indeed, it has been said that cliffhanger endings to stories must at least have a minor conclusion, none of which was apparent for this movie. However, this is less of concern for this movie than for movies where the story and its characters itself are key. In some sense, Death Note is akin to a chess game. The stalemate is secondary to the elegance and keenness of the moves which caused it.
Student Light picks up a notebook, entitled Death Note, on the streets one rainy night. The book allows its owner to kill by writing the victim's name on the book while picturing his or her face in the owner's mind. Light decides to use his powers against criminals and suspects, and soon police investigators begin to crack down on him. The story soon escalates into a battle of tactics between Light and the police, particularly genius investigator L.
Having seen the advertisements, one would probably be misled into thinking that the movie expounds on the terror people would be subjected to with the Death Note.
Yet, the focus is really on how cleverly L narrows the identity of the killer down to one person, and how Light employs an elaborate set of methods to avoid capture. In fact, the creators of the story plays with the audience's minds. They reveal the seemingly infallible moves of one side, and then show how this move is countered (and at the same time impressing the audience). It seems that as Light becomes more adept at using the Death Note to kill and avoid capture, and as L gains more and more information about the killer, the tactics get better and better, engaging the audience in the story.
However, the notion of the Death Note is inherently more worthy of attention than the tactical aspect of the movie. Thus, it seems that to attract attention, showing what the movie is really about was secondary in the promotional team's considerations.
Brilliance in tactics could have manifested itself in myriad mediums. By choosing the death of others as the medium (Death Note, not, say, Paralysis Note), the creators mirror Kindaichi Case Files in approach. Story lines of both stories escalate the stakes of the game to life itself, in an attempt to make the story more interesting. However, this brings the unpleasant side-effects of disturbing some, and deterring those averse to themes of death altogether.
The end of the movie presents itself as rather inconclusive. Indeed, it has been said that cliffhanger endings to stories must at least have a minor conclusion, none of which was apparent for this movie. However, this is less of concern for this movie than for movies where the story and its characters itself are key. In some sense, Death Note is akin to a chess game. The stalemate is secondary to the elegance and keenness of the moves which caused it.