Ugetsu [VHS]

Ugetsu [VHS]
by Kenji Mizoguchi

Ugetsu [VHS]
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Product details

Actor: Eitar? Ozawa, Ikio Sawamura, Kinuyo Tanaka, Machiko Ky?, Masayuki Mori
Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Subtitled); Japanese (Original Language), Analog
Format: Black & White, NTSC
Running Time: 94 minutes
Release Date: 2000-06-13
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Homevision
Studio: Homevision

VHS Movie Reviews of Ugetsu [VHS]

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.

-------------------------

Movie Review: A timeless classic
Summary: 5 Stars

It was hard for me to decide which of Mizoguchi's 2 masterpieces UGETSU or SANSHO THE BAILIFF was the greater film. Let's just say they are 1 and 1A in that order. UGETSU monogatari is on many film critic's lists as one of the top 10 films ever made, and for good reason. The shear beauty of it is one thing. A while back I went to an exhibition of early 20th century Shin Hanga woodblock prints. Watching UGETSU is like seeing these marvelous works of art come to life. The scenes in the Wakasa manor between Genjuro and Lady Wakasa's spirit are some of the most gorgeous moments ever committed to celluloid. The whole movie is an eye pleasing treasure, but aside from the pure aesthetics, UGETSU is a wonderful fable, a moving allegory of Buddhist principles that has a timeless relevance found only in the greatest visions of the masters.
UGETSU or SANSHO? Decisions, decisions..both are true masterpieces..movies that must be seen..timeless art from one of the great directors at the height of his powers.

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.
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Summary of Ugetsu [VHS]

Hailed by critics as one of the most masterfully directed and beautifully photographed films of all time, Kenji Mizoguchi's stunning classic is an eerie tale of misguided ambition and forbidden passion. Two 16th-century peasants abandon their families to seek fame and fortune, but in attaining their desires, both men destroy their lives and bring tragedy to their families. A powerful testament to the illusory nature of happiness, Ugetsu firmly established Mizoguchi's reputation in the West, and helped earn him recognition as one of the world's greatest directors of women.
Hailed 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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