Ugetsu Monogatari

People write and direct ghost stories with different aims. Some try to convince the audiences of some vague possibility of life after death or some just want to take them by surprise by some twist ending and then scream "gotcha!" ("didn't you know, he was talking to a ghost all this while?!") Manoj N. Shyamalan, for example, has this idea of what a ghost story should look like. This is of course all very boring.

The 1953 Japanese film Ugetsu Monogatari directed by Kenji Mizoguchi is also a ghost story but his approach couldn't be more different. Ugetsu, translated as Tales of Moonlight and Rain ('U' means moon and "Getsu" means rain in Japanese as the excellent commentary track informs us), is based on a set of Japanese folk tales and also incorporates influences from a Maupassant story. And exactly as it should be, ghosts in this movie are used to point to human subjectivity and consciousness and not to make some useless point about life after death or some such thing. I think it is very interesting to see those ancient tales in such light, the way they captured such "modern" concepts of subjectivity and incorporated it in their storytelling. It was perhaps their way of writing an interior monologue. Also the story becomes a very powerful tool for exploring how extreme emotions of grief, loss or desire can destabilise one's perception of the world and one's self so radically. When the dead come back to the living to voice their longings and regrets, it is the emotion that counts more than the fact that they have some kind of a life after death.

Anyway I am not writing anything about the story or the plot of the film because it might spoil the experience of watching it. I liked it a lot, may be even more than Rashomon which points to a fluid barrier separating the quick and the dead too just like this film. The criterion DVD got the DVD of the year award from many different websites last year and it is easy to see why. While I didn't care much for a two and half hour documentary about Mizoguchi's life (it is the first film by him that I have seen) the commentary track by the film critic and east Asian cinema expert Tony Rayns is the best commentary I have ever heard on a DVD. It is scholarly, accessible, pleasant on the ear and very well structured. He goes in detail into the production history of the film, Mizoguchi's career, his editing and filming style ("long take, one cut one scene"), literary and cultural background, Japanese theatrical history, political subtexts and hosts of other things. And he makes all very interesting. It is like reading a fat little book about the film...

Top DVD releases of last year. L'Eclisse DVD was also excellent. It is at the second place. Haven't seen Au Hasard Balthazar yet! This is an essay from the criterion site. Although I would rather suggest not to read anything about it before watching it.