Male/female divide

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Because this movie is about samurai/chivalric male code of honor, something from which women have been historically excluded and to which they are apparently emotionally indifferent.

623 females is not really that strong of a sample, especially since the sample isn't random. I'd say that the females that vote are probably just idiots, well except for the 18-29 year old females, who seem to like the film.

I'm a woman and I gave it 10... but I'm a jidai geki addict.



Starry Vere, God bless you!

This topic comes up extremely frequently on the imdb and I'm shocked by how few people realise that when there's that big a divide you should be extremely sceptical of the data. I've seen it pointed out many times elsewhere on the imdb that the big male/female divides (always with far lower ratings by females, always the big gap in under 18 or over 45 groups) tend to occur on films which are on borderlines of the top 250. My theory (and I've seen other people put it forward too) is that the low votes by females under 18 or 45 should be discounted because they're probably either trolls or staff members rigging the ratings. Honestly, imdb's rating system is famously weird and opaque and I wouldn't put it past them to have dummy accounts to manage the ratings. God knows for what sinister purpose--I think imdb likes to be able to control the ratings to some extent (hence their weird weighting policy).

Ask yourself, does it make sense that all under-18 women collectively hate this film while those just a few years older love it every bit as much as men? Sure people undergo a big maturity leap around then, but that could not account for such a huge variation. Anomalies that large should always be viewed with suspicion in any data set.

Not yelling at the OP who was respectful and clearly justly curious, but this is a bit of a sore point for me. As a 22yo female film buff I'm sick of listening to 'girls have terrible taste' 'women just don't appreciate this film.' Harakiri, one of the best films I've ever seen, is about really fundamental human--not male or female--issues: moral obligations, protection of one's family, the emptiness of powerful human institutions, the necessity of balancing rigid moral codes against real human problems and weaknesses. Anyone who thinks women are unable to appreciate issues like that essentially thinks women are inhuman since those are sort of concerns that define what it's like to be an ordinary human being. I sometimes wonder what world people who leave comments to that effect live in. Do they actually *know* any real women? There was a similar discussion on the Ikiru board which turned into people pointing out that women don't really care about 'issues' like 'life' or 'meaning'. It genuinely scares me to think of people who believe something like that!

Also, on another note as a huge fan of samurai films (and gangster films, geeky sci-fi, gory horror) I don't even notice a gender divide amongst my real life friends and peers along these genre lines. I was about 17 before I even learned there was a stereotype that girls didn't like films like that. Maybe my experience is unusual, or maybe these sterotypes have outlived their usefulness, at least among younger film fans.

The above poster is mostly correct. When you sign on to IMDB, you are presented with what is known as a captcha code. This is probably a vain attempt to stop automated registration by programs. I've seen instances of hundreds of IMDB accounts created even after they started using captcha with variations of the same name within 2 minutes.

It is not 'trolls' who vote on films one by one, but people who're using software to create large numbers of accounts and use them for bulk automated voting. I don't know what extent this occurs on IMDB, but for many of these foreign and silent 'cult' films the people behind these automated accounts for some reason chose the over 45 female demographic (I think it's probable they hide their tracks better most of the time). So it's not the case that over 45 women are profoundly different than the rest of the population with countless films, it's someone who is voting it down and automating the accounts with those demographics.

There is always one of these threads on every film effected by it and very few realize it doesn't add up for some reason.

It's because Hanshiro says "Motome loved her and was ready to marry her. Miho had no objection either."

Don't you see the sexism in that statement?

http://premiercritic.blogspot.in

Have to chime in. I'm in my 40's, female, and gave this film a 9/10.
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