Ugetsu - Criterion Collection
by Kenji Mizoguchi
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Eitar? Ozawa, Ikio Sawamura, Kinuyo Tanaka, Machiko Ky?, Masayuki MoriDirector: Kenji Mizoguchi
Brand: Image Entertainment
Cinematographer: Kazuo Miyagawa
Editor: Mitsuz? Miyata
Producer: Masaichi Nagata
Writer: Akinari Ueda
Writer: Ky?chi Tsuji
Writer: Matsutar? Kawaguchi
Writer: Yoshikata Yoda
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Japanese (Original Language); English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Dolby, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 94 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-11-08
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion Collection
Movie Reviews of Ugetsu - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: a yin yang film
Summary: 5 Stars
The concept of yin and yang describes the interconnectedness of opposites:
for example, light an dark, male and female, contraction ( yin) and expansion ( yang). It applies as well to social constructions such as good and evil, rich and poor, honor and dishonor. Applied to life, the concept can be a warning about the consequences of living on the edge. Extreme good will turn to evil; extreme wealth to poverty; extreme honor to dishonor, and so on. In the dance of these interacting forces, the best spot to be is in the center because the center is balance, peace, well-being. Only in the center can creation take place; only in balance can a human being exist in the present moment, unburdened of future tasks and past regrets.
Of course in the unfolding of life there is constant interplay between yin and yang. Yang gathers. Yin disperses. The interplay guarantees growth, change, and evolution. Remain balanced during all of this shifting is indeed a challenge. Sometimes individuals are pushed about by the forces of the universe, such as happens in periods of war. This is what happens to simple, good men and women in the celebrated Japanese film, Ugetsu. Watching the film from a yin and yang perspective, viewers reap a sense of forgiveness. A forgiveness given by the higher ups who made the film-- let's call it universal consciousness-- to the simple men and women of Japan who participated in any way whatsoever, in the horrors of World War II.
Kenji Mizoguchi made the film in 1953, eight years after Hiroshima and Japan's surrender. Rather than deal with modern war and forgiveness, he set his film in medieval Japan. The story is based on a popular Japanese Fairy tale.
A Quick synopsis: Genjuro is a potter who longs for wealth and luxury, while Tobei a farmer, dreams of the glories of the samurai. The two of them take off to the town of Nagahama to sell their wares, leaving their wives, Miyagi and hama, behind in a small village. War rages around them. The men run into its jaws, looking for opportunity; the women want to hide and grasp safety. War is an extreme. It pushes people off balance, causes them to live on the edge.
Genjuro ends up in complete expansion. In t Nagahama, he not only finds success in selling his wares, he also ends up in a place of extreme luxury and in the arms of beautiful Lady Wakasa. . "I never knew such pleasures existed," he says. Lady Wakasa convinces him to marry her.
Through efforts not his own, Tobei, who is a fool, ends up with the decapitated head of a powerful general. As his reward, the general of the opposing forces appoints Tobei a samurai and gives him a battalion of men. Tobei ends up in complete contraction: hard, a warrior.
The wives meet similar extremes: while her Genjuro is slothfully indulging in sake and food, Miyaki starves and is killed for a rice cake. Ohama, Tobei's wife, is raped by soldiers and descends into a life of a prostitution.The Virgin Knows: an art theft thriller
Wheels of yin and yang continue to turn, with each scene fluidly finding it's complement, or opposite. Night scenes cut to day scenes. Scenes of the wife splice to scene of husband. Fire to water. Ghost to reality. Dream to wakefulness. The men's restless acquisitive nature and woman's homing instinct force dance inside war.
In the end of the film, when war comes to a close, life adjusts. We're back in the village. The characters must forgive each other to find their balance. The last scene sums it up: Genjuro stands at his potter's wheel, centering his clay, creating.
Why yin and yang? The Japanese people had to pick up and go on, accept that war pushes them off balance, and realize that they might have made foolish mistakes but now, in the present, it was their responsibility to find the center, live in balance.
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Summary of Ugetsu - Criterion Collection
The great Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi's crowning achievement, set in sixteenth-century Japan, a period of bloody civil war, and focusing on an ambitious potter haunted by a beautiful ghost and a farmer who dreams of becoming a samurai. A classic comHailed by critics as one of the greatest films ever made, Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu is an undisputed masterpiece of Japanese cinema, revealing greater depths of meaning and emotion with each successive viewing. Mizoguchi's exquisite "gender tragedy" is set during Japan's violent 16th-century civil wars, a historical context well-suited to the director's compassionate perspective on the plight of women and the foibles of men. The story focuses on two brothers, Genjuro (Masayuki Mori) and Tobei (Sakae Ozawa), whose dreams of glory (one as a wealthy potter, the other a would-be samurai) cause them to leave their wives for the promise of success in Kyoto. Both are led astray by their blind ambitions, and their wives suffer tragic fates in their absence, as Ugetsu evolves into a masterful mixture of brutal wartime realism and haunting ghost story. The way Mizoguchi weaves these elements so seamlessly together is what makes Ugetsu (masterfully derived from short stories by Akinari Ueda and Guy de Maupassant) so challenging and yet deeply rewarding as a timeless work of art. Featuring flawless performances by some of Japan's greatest actors (including Machiko Kyo, from Kurosawa's Rashomon), Ugetsu is essential viewing for any serious lover of film. --Jeff Shannon
DVD features
The Criterion Collection's high standards of scholarly excellence are on full display in the two-disc set of Ugetsu, packaged in an elegant slipcase reflecting the tonal beauty of the film itself, which has been fully restored with a high-definition digital transfer. The well-prepared commentary by critic/filmmaker Tony Rayns combines the astute observations of a serious cineaste (emphasizing a keen appreciation for Mizoguchi's long-take style, compositional meaning, and literary inspirations) with informative biographical and historical detail. In the 14-minute featurette "Two Worlds Intertwined," director Masahiro Shinoda discusses how Mizoguchi's career and films have had a lasting impact on himself and Japanese culture in general. Interviews with Tokuzo Tanaka (first assistant director on Ugetsu) and cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa focus more specifically on anecdotal production history Mizoguchi's working methods, including the director's legendary perfectionism regarding painstaking details of props, costumes, and production design.
Disc 2 consists entirely of Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director, a 150-minute documentary from 1975. Though it occasionally gets bogged down in biographical minutia, the film provides a thoroughly comprehensive survey of Mizoguchi's career, including interviews with nearly all of Mizoguchi's primary collaborators. Director/interviewer Kaneto Shindo ultimately arrives at an emotionally devastating coup de grace when he informs the great actress Kinuyo Tanaka (star of The Life of Oharu and other Mizoguchi classics) that Mizoguchi had considered her "the love of his life." Tanaka's graceful response provides a moving appreciation of their artistic bond, which never evolved into romance. As we learn, the tragic irony of Mizoguchi's life is that he died in sadness and suffering, in 1956, just as he was entering a more hopeful and artistically revitalized period of middle age. After showing us all the locations that were important in Mizoguchi's life, the film closes with a blunt discovery of life's ethereal nature: The great director's final home was torn down and replaced with a gas station. The 72-page booklet that accompanies Ugestu contains a well-written appreciation of the film by critic Phillip Lopate. Also included are the three short stories that inspired Ugetsu, allowing readers to see how Mizoguchi and screenwriter Yoshikata Yoda masterfully combined elements of these unrelated stories to create one of the enduring classics of Japanese cinema. --Jeff Shannon
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