Day for Night Magazine

The Movie of My Dreams [Ugetsu DVD review]

BY JEFF HUGHES

The Criterion Collection inspires in me a feverish combination of gratitude and sorrow. With a few notable exceptions (Armageddon), everything the company releases is interesting, and many are masterpieces that were heretofore available, if at all, on grainy pan-and-scan transfers. And yet, so often, along with the director interviews and original theatrical trailers, Criterions tend to deliver an unmistakable sense of missed opportunities. Insofar as one expects this, Ugetsu, one of Criterion’s newest releases, does not disappoint.

But despite my reservations about the “Criterion package,” Ugetsu, directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, is wonderful. The story of two couples set against the backdrop of a civil war raging through 16th century Japan, Ugetsu follows the men as they attain wealth, pleasure, and honor, while the chaos enveloping the country destroys their wives. Genjuro, a potter, and Tobei, his neighbor, look to the war to realize their ambitions. For Genjuro, the dangerous conditions mean profits: if he can get to and from town alive, his wares will command exorbitant prices. Tobei, on the other hand, dreams of becoming a respected samurai, and the war provides him with an opportunity to prove his martial prowess. Their wives, Miyagi and Ohama, try to act as brakes on their ambitions, unsuccessfully: the men’s avarice and pride sends them into monomaniacal frenzies, and they cannot yield to reason.

And yet, “avarice” and “pride” do not capture the passionate longings of Genjuro and Tobei. Despite their indifference to their wives’ cries, they are not indifferent to
their wives. Indeed, they scheme and pursue their destructive ends as much for their wives as for themselves: Genjuro longs to buy Miyagi expensive kimonos, and Tobei wants Ohama to glory in her role as the wife of a lauded samurai. Without their wives, their goals are worthless. And yet, they abandon their wives in order to pursue their ends: an enchantress spirit masquerading as a local noble seduces and marries Genjuro, keeping him in her dream palace, while Tobei runs off to join the war. As a result Miyagi and Ohama fall victim to the countryside marauders: soldiers rape Ohama, who becomes a geisha, and crazed, half-starved bandits kill Miyagi for her food in front of her son.

Subtitles at the beginning of the film inform the viewer that the movie refashions the fantasies of Akinari Ueda’s Ugetsu monogatori (Tales of Moonlight and Rain), the 17th century collection that provides the plot. “Ugetsu” means both “tale” and “fantasy,” and while translators use the former meaning to render the title, the latter sense anchors
the film thematically. While Genjuro and Tobei recklessly pursue wealth and honor, they fail to see what they’ve become and what their ideals will cost them. Throughout the
film, characters ring change on the idea that their sight cannot be trusted: they can’t believe their eyes, or they must be dreaming. And for much of the movie, Genjuro eyes are not reliable, he is dreaming. Genjuro spends the central section of the movie living with ghosts, in a house that had been destroyed years ago. Over the course of the film, his dream life infects his real life, until they merge and he sees only what isn’t there. Literally insensible to his previous life, Genjuro revels in a realm of edenic pleasure with his aristocratic ghost-wife, while Miyagi-as-Cassandra suffers violently for his folly.

Mizoguchi’s visual aesthetic expertly limns this thin film separating reality and fantasy. Before Lady Wakasa and her nurse spirit him away to Kutsuki manor, Genjuro sits at a stall and considers purchasing an expensive kimono for Miyagi. The camera is positioned so that the viewer sits inside the stall, looking out at Genjuro, wearied and satisfied, head-on. After a cut, the viewer sees Genjuro from behind, looking through an open passageway. Miyagi comes down this hall and finds her husband, sitting in the same position, before several beautiful kimonos, and she rapturously presses them to her body. The viewer thinks time has passed, but Genjuro simply dreams this sequence. Lady Wakasa and her attendant bring him out of this revelry, only to plunge him into a darker dream.

Mizoguchi explores this tension most famously in one of the final scenes of the movie, when Genjuro, released from Kutsuki manor, returns home. He runs through his house, calling for his wife, and the camera follows him as he enters through the front door, passes through the main room, and exits through the back. The camera pans across the wall of his home as he looks for her outside. When he renters through the front door, he finds Miyagi tending a fire in the middle of the room. Both overjoyed, they grab each other and the viewer passes over the confusion of having seen Miyagi stabbed with a spear. But of course, she is dead, and when he looks for her in the morning, the village chief tells Genjuro that he has been looking after their child since his wife’s death.

But while Ugetsu is a deeply enjoyable movie, made with formidable artistry, the “Criterion Extras”—the interviews and trailers and commentary—mar the overall package, especially since they purport to justify the exorbitant price of the film. The extras include the theatrical trailers, three interviews, a Japanese documentary about Mizoguchi, and commentary. The interviews, with director Masahiro Shinoda, an assistant director on the film, Tokuzo Tanaka, and the cinema-tographer Kazuo Miyagawa, are all blandly laudatory. The editing of the interviews hides the subjects’ interlocutors, thought clearly the men on camera are not speaking extemporaneously. The implied questions to which they respond all deal with Mizoguchi as the archetype of the auteur: to the extent that the viewer learns about the acting, he or she hears about how Mizoguchi was able to extract the best possible performances from the actors. Most of the comments reveal little about the movie or its production: the viewer gets a few entertaining stories from the backlot and a lot of anecdotes about Mizoguchi available in almost any article about him and his films. The second disc contains a 1975 documentary produced in Japan that is even duller. The producers travel to important places in Mizoguchi’s life (the street on which he was born, the hospital where he died) and talk vaguely about the greatness of the director. Furthermore, these extras lend a feeling of amateurishness to this masterpiece: the interview with Miyagawa was culled from Criterion’s laserdisc edition of the film and the documentary, which supposedly justifies the entire second disc, was taken from Japanese television.

And yet, despite all my reservations about Criterion, and my distaste for much of what it does, it has done a great service in releasing this powerful and rewarding film. I just wish they thought as seriously about the interviews and extras as they do about the packaging.