Ugetsu (1953)

 Kenji Mizoguchi's "Ugetsu"

After Kenji Mizoguchi released his 1952 film "The Life of Oharu" to global recognition, he was given far more creative freedom with his next project. This project, 1953's "Ugetsu" went on to even bigger global success, despite receiving a bit colder reception in his homeland of Japan. "Ugetsu" is unlike anything Mizoguchi had made before, although the marks of the master are still all over the piece. 

"Ugetsu" centers on four people, two men and two women, in Japan's civil-war torn Azuchi-Momoyama period (16th century). One man's dream is to make beautiful pottery and the other is to become a glorious samurai. Both men vivaciously chase their dream, despite the chaos and terror of the civil war happening around them. In doing so, they both neglect their loyal and hardworking wives. The man wanting to become a samurai does so by stealing the head of a famous general and is rewarded with armor, a mount, and a retinue. However, his wife is kidnapped and sold into prostitution. The man who wants to be a pottery maker is seduced by the undead ghost of long gone noble house after she lauds his artistic craftmanship. After spending an unknown period of time in the delirious haze of this enchantress' grasp, he returns home to find out his wife was killed by hungry vagabonds. 

The film has been interpreted in varying ways and its eerie and ethereal tone creates a lasting, memorable piece that seems to shine a bit brighter than a lot of Japanese films coming out at the time, along with shining brighter than even Mizoguchi's own filmography. While the film can be interpreted in many ways, there are certain certainties about its thematic subjects. 

Firstly, there is the subject matter most commonly associated with Mizoguchi throughout his entire filmography. Mizoguchi often makes very feminist films that detail the unique struggles faced by women both in historical Japan and contemporary Japan. This is perhaps the most evident thematic touchstone found in the film. As the two men of the story go off and chase their own self-centered and personalized ambitions, the women are left to fend for themselves in a world of violence, chaos, and subservience. Even the ghostly seductress, Lady Wakasa, was killed by a male dominated society and even 'killed' by our protagonist, Genjuro. It wouldn't feel like a Mizoguchi film without the central focus on women and their fatal place in a male-dominated society.

Another thing that resonated with me thematically is the reflective musing on war, and more specifically, the war that just ended when Mizoguchi released the film in 1953. The post-war environment created some of the most artistically visionary films in all of Japanese cinema and some even were reflective of the preceding event. "Ugetsu," although taking place during a completely separate war and a completely separate period in Japanese history, is used as a canvas for Mizoguchi to reflect on the sentiments and troubles of those devastating years. The Tobei character, who wants to be a samurai, represents the Japanese men of the war years who foolishly got wrapped up in the exhilaration of military ambitions. While these men went to fight, their wives and female family members were left behind to suffer the fallout of their absence. Many of them were forced into 'dishonorable' professions, like prostitution, in order to economically make due. In "Ugetsu," this is exactly what happens to Tobei's wife, Ohama. Meanwhile, the citizens of Japan (in both the film and in wartime Japan) were left to deal with chaos, destruction, and civil conflict. 

What our protagonist, Genjuro, represents brings up to our next thematic link. Mizoguchi has been known to muse about art and the artist in his work. More specifically, 1946's "Utamaro and His Five Women" comes to mind, in which Mizoguchi uses a biographical format of a period artist to reflect on his own art and his relationship to his work. Similarly with "Ugetsu," Mizoguchi seems to place himself in the story. Our protagonist, Genjuro, acts as a stand-in for Mizoguchi, and more specifically, during the war period in the 1940s. During the heat of wartime, Mizoguchi made his 1941 film "The 47 Ronin," a pro-war propaganda film for the state. 12 years later with "Ugetsu," Mizoguchi acknowledges his regret at his compliance through Genjuro's adherence to Lady Wakasa, as he stops making commercial pottery to make purely aesthetical pottery for royalty and power. This directly parallels to Mizoguchi's career, as his commercialized filmmaking pre-war led directly into making films with a certain framework in mind, that being state incentivization. In "Ugetsu," once Genjuro finally shakes the spell of his conformity to this powerful authority, he returns home to find nothing but loss and devastation. He then devotes his artistic pottery pursuits to non-commercial, non-aesthetic reasons, for himself and his understanding of the world. Similarly, Mizoguchi, in the post-war landscape, is making films entirely reflective of life and the struggles with understanding it. 

With the creative freedom afforded to Mizoguchi, his artistically venturous "Ugetsu" contained multitudes of themes that were pulled from various aspects of contemporary life and personal struggle. Mizoguchi places himself in the film and spends the runtime contemplating his place in the world, a woman's place in a male-dominated world, and the nature of humanity's relationship to power and violence. The 'full-to-the-brim' thematic mechanics of the film is perhaps what won international recognition. It is a film so steeped in both personal resonance for the filmmaking, along with pontifications of modern societal problems. It's tonal shifts between stark realism and eerie fantasy create a confounding work of creative flexibility. It's a hypnotic film, transcendental, and dreamlike. Perhaps the dreamlike is more nightmarish, as Mizoguchi's images are far more haunting than anything. "Ugetsu" and all its creative expansiveness offers the best of what Japanese cinema has to offer.