UGETSU (Ugetsu monogatari) A
aka: Tales of
Moonlight and Rain
Japan (96 mi) 1953
d: Kenji Mizoguchi
There is in this film, first and foremost, the amazing
musical soundtrack by Fumio Hayasaka, which is one of the most avant garde,
particularly considering its era from the early 50’s, which at times feels like
a Japanese classical Noh version of the Velvet Underground, with a dissonant
sounding electric violin crashing against our senses, veering out into its own
territory painfully out of tune, as if wounded, crying out in helpless
agony. This imbalanced psychological
sound implant helps us understand the anguished, out of control mindset of the
characters. The film combines two
original stories by Akinari Ueda, originally published in 1776, set during the
feudal civil war era of the 16th century, the first being The House in the Thicket, a Ulysses-like adventure where a man
leaves his wife for seven years while he travels to make money by selling
silk. When he returns, he is greeted by
her ghost, leaving him reeling in guilt, loss, and remorse. The second story, A Serpent's Lust, features a man seduced by a demon woman posing as
a princess. Mizoguchi and scriptwriter
Yoshikata Yoda reframe these two stories into one, creating an effective
portrait of misguided ambition, showing men who are willing to abandon
everything driven by their own greed, without ever concerning themselves with
the consequences of their families. With
an almost IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946) second look at their lives, these
irresolute men who leave their families in search of their own selfish dreams
discover later what they overlooked during their journey.
Genjuro (Masayuki Mori) becomes obsessed with earning
unheard of profits selling his pottery at local markets, risking his own life
as well as his family’s at the chance to sell even more at the inflated prices
induced by war, taking advantage of the misfortunes of others, ignoring
warnings to seek safety from an oncoming army that is ravaging the villages,
while his rather foolish brother Tobei, Sakae Ozawa, has designs on becoming a
great samurai warrior. When the war
comes to their village, they both greedily fill a boatload with pottery and
travel with their reluctant wives to a city across the lake. But on their way, a fog descends onto the
lake leaving them engulfed in an eerie mist where they encounter a ghost-like
floating vessel with a dying passenger onboard who in his last breath warns
them of mortal dangers ahead. Inexplicably,
despite the same warnings from the war ravaged region they left behind, they both
return, deciding what lies ahead is no place for women, dropping off their
wives to fend for themselves before returning alone to cross the river to sell
their wares.
Time passes as the men eventually blend into the landscape
pursuing their dreams while forgetting about what they left behind on the other
shore, which we see in graphic detail, as the opportunistic peacefulness of one
shore contrasts against the brutalization and murder on the other, where one
wife is killed almost immediately while the other succumbs to prostitution. This causes a rift in consciousness that
expands to supernatural levels as Genjuro falls under the possessive spell of
the mysterious ghost princess Lady Wakusa, the superbly enticing Machiko Kyô, who
resides in the surreal opulence of the Kutsuki Manor, a castle on the outskirts
of town where Genjuro becomes ensnared, like a spider in her web, while led to
believe these are the happiest moments in his life, “I never imagined such
pleasures existed!” Meanwhile, Tobei
finds his own rewards as well, although through deception in a Falstaff-like
manner, taking credit for murdering a rival lord that he just accidentally
happened upon. Over time, both regret
the loss of what they’ve left behind.
When Genjuro expresses his desire to leave the castle, Lady Wakusa’s
fury knows no bounds.
Eventually both men find their way back to their original
homes, stripped of all possessions, now strangely quiet and empty, beautifully
captured in one long take by cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa, as we follow
Genjuro’s haunting entrance to his home as he scans the premises and finds
nothing, yet the camera doesn’t stop searching, slowly feeling its way around
the edges of the rooms until we rediscover an apparition of his wife, Kinuyo
Tanaka from The
Life of Oharu (Saikaku ichidai onna) (1952), waiting patiently for him to
return. As with many other Mizoguchi
films, there’s a sense of almost comic overacting from his characters, perhaps
overly theatrical, as if they’re onstage instead of in front of a camera, which
may work in an artificial setting, such as the highly exaggerated Lady
Macbeth-like stage of Lady Wakusa, but seems oddly out of place in an otherwise
realist aesthetic. Yet in this film,
with its shifts alternating from ordinary, everyday life to the supernatural,
which feel seamlessly integrated, it’s the lurid world of the ghost princess
that rises above everything else, as her anguished internalized pain, reflected
by that amazing musical score that seems to stand for every woman whose life
and dreams have been abandoned altogether, left to wither and die without ever
bearing fruit, without anyone ever considering what their dreams may have been.
