Typical Mizoguchi Aesthetics

Kristian 2022-01-12 08:01:12

Only his and Ozu's films can truly represent the Japanese national style, and only his schedule can be comparable to Kurosawa Akira. Mizoguchi learned to paint and was greatly influenced by the European paragraph shots. His long shots, in addition to richness In addition to his scheduling, there is also the slowly unfolding scroll style and the unobtrusive but surprisingly fun scheduling of time and space. With just a long shot at the end of the film, Mizoguchi is enough to leave a famous movie history like Genjuro's shot in Wakasa's palace in this film. The director uses a lot of depression angles and close-up shots, which contrasts sharply with the whole lens movement style. It also implies the unusualness of this place and the protagonist's mental journey.

Unlike Akira Kurosawa, who is keen on expressing actions with fast montages, Mizoguchi Kenji regards long shots as the essence of film art. However, his long shots are different from Ozu's slow narrative of low-angle fixed camera positions, but pay more attention to camera movement and scene scheduling.

In "Yueyue Monogatari", you can see a group play that is rare in Ozu's movies. Although there is no rigorous to demanding composition and scheduling of Akira Kurosawa, the rich lens angle still interprets different metaphors and atmospheres. .

As an adaptation of the novel of the same name, "Rainy Moon Story" selects two short stories to merge, forming a bilinear narrative feature.

On the subject, Mizoguchi Kenji found the perfect fit between the two, which is the struggle against desire and the meaning of home. The responsibility to the family, the desire for wealth and power usually split in their consistency until they become opposites.

At the beginning of the pursuit of power and money, the happiness of wives and children is often the biggest motivation for men. But when a better life really appeared in front of us, the wife of chaff became a stumbling block again. The word responsibility has become a heavy shackle that binds men. They look to get rid of but are afraid of losing. They are ambitious and at a loss.

An interesting detail is that every time Genjuro sells pottery, he brings back a gorgeous kimono and yukata for his wife. With him, this is a kind of complacency in fulfilling family responsibilities. It is because he combines his desire for wealth with him. The performance of the bondage of the wife's obligations. But when he started in Wakasa, he also chose to give him a yukata as a gift.

In the play, this implies that Genjuro regards material as the only way to express his feelings about women, and also compares his two feelings for Wakasa and his wife Miyagi. Outside the play, this also expresses a plot of the director. It is said that when Kenji Mizoguchi was a young man, because of his poor family, he used to design yukata patterns. The magnificent yukata pattern in the film not only greatly enhances the outline of the Dongying ethnic customs, but also shows Mizoguchi’s unique aesthetic insights.

Mizoguchi Kenji is known as the "feminist master", and the masterpieces including this film and "Nishizuru Generation Girl" and "Sansho Doctor" all explain the suppression of women by classical ethics and the feminist perspective from the perspective of women. It symbolizes the ultimate salvation of the family to men.

The seemingly powerful female ghost Wakasa may express the director's views on feminism more clearly. Although she has died of Huangquan, she still actively pursues love. It is not so much to realize the dream of her life, but rather to allude to the gradual liberation of modern women in love and sex. But when her father's voice rang from the armor with only the head left, she was shocked and at a loss.

This kind of patriarchal or male power’s imprisonment and oppression of women is fully revealed in Noh-like performances and soundtracks, and it also reflects the naked contradictions and struggles between the gradual rise of women’s status in post-war Japanese society and the entrenched traditional concepts. .

Many years later, when people study the state of Japanese social development during this period of history, Mizoguchi Kenji's movies will surely become a strong evidence. And this is the sociological significance of film art.

Marked by returning to his hometown and restarting family life, he completed his salvation. The price is the death of his wife and the painful past. Although this is not a happy ending, it can be regarded as a happy ending. Although it weakens the main theme of the film to some extent, it consolidates the great significance of family responsibilities to men from another perspective. If you use one word to summarize the movie, it would be "getting lost and knowing back" by Mtime.com Sangkaft

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Extended Reading
  • Sarina 2022-03-18 09:01:05

    Two stories, one is fame, the other is fantasy, wabi-sabi and mysterious, beautiful. The yellow beam is half pillow, the acacia is full of beds, life or death? The fame of a man, the love of a rainy moon in a woman, even if they are ghosts, they are obsessed with love and hatred. We find the disappearance in their stories, take care of our sudden shadows, and every drop of morning dew is the mark of a previous life.

  • Janice 2022-03-27 09:01:14

    The film expresses two stories and two personalities in parallel: the savagery, arrogance and blindness of men; the humility, infatuation and sobriety of women. The moral relationship between the two is again shrouded in mystery. In the film, the director uses a large number of perspectives to express the relationship between man and the world: man is both a part of nature and dominated by this world, making him seem so insignificant. Many of the photography and depth-of-field composition shots in the film have rich audio-visual connotations.

Ugetsu quotes

  • Ohama: Success always comes at a price, and we pay in suffering.