Movie #24: Released in 1953, directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, 96 minutes. New to me!

LetterBoxd score: 4.5 stars

This movie goes hard.

We’re now three movies into postwar Japanese cinema and it seems clear that this medium became a form of national grappling with the trauma of the recent past. In Late Spring, we have the tearful acceptance that we have to let the traditional past go, and move into the future. With Rashomon, we have the chaos of the civil war, and the fractured ways people recall the same event. Now with Ugetsu, we see how war drives people to make catastrophic moral mistakes.

The movie has the power of an iconic parable, and in fact, I wonder if it’s power in the west stems in part from it being a literal classic story that is unfamiliar to us. If, many times as a child, you had been told the story of the man who stayed away from his wife too long during the dangerous civil war, only to return to her ghost, then you might not be as surprised by the movie’s boldness. But for me, it was the first real dark ending I’ve seen in any of these movies. No redemption in war, no second chances.

One more detail – the desperate need, when you’ve been away and had a traumatic experience, to clutch at your young child. My heart!

Why would someone think it’s one of the ten greatest movies ever made?

It’s a perfect little war parable, and if you experience it for the first time as film, rather than a well-known story, it has a lot of power.

Next up: The Earrings of Madame…