Ugetsu - Criterion Collection
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Movie Reviews of Ugetsu - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: Mysterious Story!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a great story of a man who dreams of being a great man of wealth and position in 15th century Japan. A man who is a farmer and a potter abandons his wife and child in war torn Japan to marry a woman with high status and who also turns out to be a ghost. He becomes a great samurai and wealthy, but what of his wife and child? Movie Review: Great
Summary: 5 Stars
Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari), a 1953 film by Kenji Mizoguchi, which won the Venice Film Festival's top prize (the Silver Lion Award for Best Direction) that year, is one of the best films to ever deal with the subject of human desire, and not only the obvious sexual aspects of the emotion. While ostensibly it is labeled a ghost story, since its Japanese title means Tales Of The Pale And Silvery Moon After The Rain, the story is a complex one that hides behind its astonishingly simple narrative and revelation, and is based upon two tales from a 1776 book of tales by Ueda Akinari, and a third story from French writer Guy de Maupassant. Mizoguchi and screenwriter Yoshikata Yoda adapted elements from all three tales to create something new and relevant.
It follows the lives and desires of two couple who inhabit a small Japanese village during the 16th Century, when civil wars and ravaging bands of Samurai soldiered plundered the countryside near Lake Biwa in Omi province. The two male characters, who may be friends, or relatives, are Genjur? (Masayuki Mori), a farmer and master potter, and Tobei (Sakae Ozawa, aka Eitar? Ozawa). Tobei is a dimwit and the assistant potter to Genjur?, and he dreams of military glory as a samurai, but cannot even handle a sword properly. Genjur? has a wife, Miyagi (Kinuyo Tanaka) and young son Genichi (Ikio Sawamura), and Tobei has a wife, as well. Her name is Ohama (Mitsuko Mito), and they bicker in a very Ralph and Alice Kramden sort of way, while Genjur? and Miyagi seem to have a more overtly stable and loving relationship.
Technically, this film is not as overtly sophisticated as Rashomon, yet it does not suffer from the great dramatic letdown that film does. Kazuo Miyagawa's black and white cinematography is outstanding, especially in the studio shots of the river and the ghostly lady's mansion. The seduction scene, where Lady Wakasa is dancing and singing, is oddly hypnotic, and one of the most surreal moments in the film. Much of the night scenes in the film remind me of Carl Theodor Dreyer's great Vampyr, a film with darker similarities to this one. Also, the camera is almost always moving, in this film. Very few things are static, and long takes dominate the film, with very few cuts, and then only when needed to jar the viewer for a reason. Thus, when the film ends showing us that little has changed in the valley beyond the village, we are left with a disjunct feeling between the apparent stasis of life in that time and place, and the great changes we've seen take place. That we never see the Lady, nor her retinue, nor Miyagi at film's close, portrayed in a Hollywood ghostly fashion, can confuse, a bit, upon a first viewing, but on a second viewing all becomes clear in this simple, but never simplistic, tale.
The actors are also uniformly good. Sakae, as Tobei, and Mitsuko as Ohama, are a delight, comically, and in rare dramatic moments. Machiko, as Lady Wakasa, shows dramatic improvement in just two years, as an actor, from her debut in Rashomon. Yet, the film really belongs to Kinuyo, as Miyagi, and the sublime Masayuki, as Genjur?. Masayuki was outstanding as the murdered husband in Rashomon, acting with his face alone. But, this role gives him drama and comedy, horror and befuddlement, and were it not for his name and the commentary of the film, I'd have had no idea the same actor played both roles, for he looks totally different as a peasant farmer than a samurai nobleman. One scene, before he is to go to the Lady's mansion, we see him looking at a fancy kimono, and he imagines Miyagi looking at it, even though we know she cares little for such things. The look in Genjur?'s eyes, contrasted with the reality we know, says more of the insecurities males feel in sexual relationships than many whole films devoted to the subject have.
While the film is in no way a modern psychological portrait of the sort Ingmar Bergman would later specialize in, a viewer is left with a firm idea of who all these characters were, simply by how their behavior is the same, yet parallaxed, by the contrast between the early scenes, and later ones that are recapitulative. Mizoguchi also made a bit of a career specialty in focusing on the lives of women, and even though the two male characters are the ostensible leads, the female characters shoulder much of the narrative and dramatic load, and do so consummately well. Ugetsu is a great film, made by an artist at his peak, and even with the misgivings its creator had, it stands the test of time immaculately.
Movie Review: Ugetsu
Summary: 5 Stars
Ugetsu - Criterion Collection Ugetsu is one of those films great directors have referred to over subsequent years. The film draws on the ancient Eastern tradition of seeking fulfillment in flights of fantasy, ignoring the deeper meaning and satisfaction of everyday life. Kenzo Mizoguchi is a brilliant director whose influence cannot be underestimated. Movie Review: Magnificent fable of desire and attachment
Summary: 5 Stars
The first time I saw 'Ugetsu Monogatari' years ago, I wasn't so taken with it. I'm sure the overly soft, muddy VHS with barely translated and barely readable subtitles probably had a lot to do with my initial indifference. While the Criterion DVD shows some print damage at the reel ends, it still looks great overall - and I can finally see what all the fuss over this one has been about. This is a very fine film, and an absolutely gorgeous one.
While the main protagonists are a pair of men, as ever with Mizoguchi, it's the suffering of the women that gives the film its heart and soul. The trials women in Japanese society have historically faced, as just about anyone familiar with the director's work knows, was his key theme. Seeing his tragic 'Life of Oharu' one could little guess that the Genroku-era book it is based on, Saikaku's 'Koshoku Ichidai Onna' (usually translated as 'The Life of an Amorous Woman') is actually a book full of wit and humor. Mizoguchi faithfully reproduces the episodes detailing Saikaku's heroine's downwardly-mobile path through life, but Saikaku's entertaining and wryly detached commentary on the mores of the day (in conflict with human nature), filtered through Mizoguchi's lens, stops just short of being a Stations of the Cross expanded to a life-story. (Ihara Saikaku, by the way, is an author I highly recommend - I have gobbled up every English translation of his work that I could lay my hands on, many, sadly, out of print.)
'Ugetsu' is nowhere near as melodramatic as that, or certain other of Mizoguchi's celebrated works. (My use of the term "melodrama" here is NOT an insult; melodrama, in Mizoguchi's hands, could attain an unmatched level of transcendent art - as anyone who has seen 'Sansho the Bailiff' can attest to.) This really does stand apart in nature from his other works, being a lyrical meditation on the ephemeral nature of the things that drive human beings, and the places our desires might lead us - skillfully marrying the naturalistic and the mystical in a compelling dual storyline that never becomes unbalanced or loses its grip.
I won't rehash the story of 'Ugetsu' - that's been done enough, and it's better just to SEE it, anyway. The real news is that Criterion has put together a stellar package for their release of this film. The three short interviews on disc one are far more substantial in terms of content than the usual. (I haven't listened to the, reportedly very good, commentary yet.) The booklet also provides real value, not so much in the essay, as in the literary sources it reproduces. Then there's the '75 documentary by Kaneto Shindo (who made the excellent 'Onibaba,' which is not to be missed, and the sadly unavailable 'Hadaka no Shima') on disc two. It's more weighted to the biographical than the technical side, and contains A LOT of information about Mizoguchi. The whole thing is beautifully packaged. As I said earlier, the source for the film itself shows some damage, but it's a safe bet that the elements are the best available, and the transfer is actually excellent. The outstanding, gauzy cinematography is crystal clear here. For the most part, the film looks absolutely great - and it is.
Movie Review: Mizoguchi--a true master of his craft
Summary: 5 Stars
Director Kenji Mizoguchi was a perfectionist. On the set he would often demand hundreds of retakes. Plus his takes were often long in duration, his signature style known as "flowing scroll"--one shot, one scene. His high standards and methods of precision are never more evident than in Ugetsu.
This story blends the supernatural world in with our earthly domain. There is a constant dreamlike, eerie atmosphere that is soothing and graceful. It begins to unfold in a poor rural 16th century village where the fear and apprehension of war is steadily looming.
Two men get caught up in dreams of wealth and foolish ambition. They have delusions of profiting from the effects of the war. Their misguided actions shape this haunting tale of love and loss. Life and death flow simultaneously side by side and our bound to keep you mesmerized to the screen.
This is commonly referred to as the most beautiful film ever made.
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Criterion has presented an excellent 2-disc edition with tons of special features.
Interviews, appreciations, documentaries. Plus a terrific 72 page book that includes the three short stories that influenced the making of this film.