#149
Post
by Sloper » Tue Jan 13, 2009 6:41 am
Sansho was my first, and remains my favourite, Mizoguchi, whereas I reacted to Crucified Lovers in much the same way as Nostalghic has to Sansho. For me, Mizoguchi’s depiction of parent/child relationships is far more moving and powerful than his depiction of romantic love, which is why Gion Bayashi and the seriously unloved Shin Heike Monogatari are also among my favourites.
It seemed to me that Crucified Lovers didn’t work hard enough to gain my sympathy for the central couple, and it sounds like you (Nostalghic) feel the same about Sansho, where we see almost nothing of the actual relationship between the mother and her children. Mizoguchi is very subtle; he doesn’t give you much to chew on; so you either feel for these delicately, elliptically drawn characters, or you don’t. I often don’t… But on revisiting The Life of Oharu and Ugetsu recently, both of which had left me cold before, I found them to be beautiful, and at times quite moving, films. So expectation certainly has a lot to do with it. I enjoy these other films a lot more now that I don’t expect to be moved by them – there’s so much else to admire in Mizoguchi's work. (By the same token, my repeat views of Sansho are often disappointing. That's emotions for you, I guess.)
As a measure of how personal these kind of reactions are, I would disagree completely with Michael K that the son is the central character in Sansho. For me, although she has very little screen time, this role is clearly filled by the mother. At the beginning, the story is told from her point of view, and even when she is separated from her children, her voice continues to permeate their lives; it still feels as though she’s watching over them (as is their father), waiting for them to find her, and this is part of what gives the film an eerie power similar to that of Ugetsu. The scene where we see her trying to escape from Sado (if I have the name right) is one of the most heart-rending things I’ve ever seen in a film.