While waiting for the Apple Pencil to charge, I will make up for Mizoguchi Kenji's "Yuyue Monogatari" that I watched the day before yesterday.
My first feeling after watching it was that it was a film between Ozu and Kurosawa, and it would be closer to Kurosawa. For these three directors, my feeling is that Ozu is the most disciplined person; whether it is the method of camera placement or the pros and cons in the dialogue between the characters, it shows a sense of ritual and respect for the actors when making movies. feel. It feels like watching his movie is like watching a square box rolling like a wheel in this world. Kurosawa is a recent director in Hollywood. His editing and rhythm are more modern. This is one of the reasons why I think his films are so popular with contemporary people. Of course, it is undeniable that "Seven Samurai" is indeed the best Japanese movie I think so far. But "Rashomon" and "Spider's Nest" will actually have a lot less impact on me.
For Mizoguchi Kenji, I think he chose a purely Japanese filming method with an extremely deep Eastern aesthetic. Watching his movie is like watching the strangeness of the Liao Zhai drawn with ink and brush. What's even better is that his story is extremely complete. I think his adaptation of Yuyue Monogatari is not weaker than Rashomon. Some of his scenes, such as boating on Lake Biwa, and the dead wood palace, are scenes that Western directors can't shoot, and they are shots with unique oriental characteristics. (Although Laota’s "Ivan's Childhood" is a bit like, it still doesn't feel like Mizoguchi)
In fact, it has been a long time since I felt a feeling of continuous ups and downs with the emotions of the characters in the play. To be precise, there has been no such sympathy for a long time. The plot at the beginning of the film: The village is invaded, Yuanjuro abandons the kiln, returns to the kiln, and finds that the porcelain has been burnt. Such a simple plot seems so ups and downs under Mizoguchi's lens. It creates a tense atmosphere that can be discovered by soldiers at any time. I don't think I lose to Hitchcock. When I was watching Kurosawa Akira, I was hardly driven by the plot. (Perhaps the composition is so beautiful and I don’t want to appreciate the plot?)
The most commendable scene in "The Story of Rainy Moon" is another scene of Genjuro returning to Kuchiki Palace after being painted by a Taoist priest. I think this is the most exciting dialogue I have seen so far. The position of Genjuro, the old woman, and the young lady has changed again and again. Each change has formed a new dialogue, and finally in Yuan Juro brandished a random sword, rushed to the courtyard and fell to the ground to end. The up-and-down and in-depth relationship between the three; and the shaping of the expressions of the three by light and shadow; and the acting skills of the three, all of which are at their peak level. In the dialogue, Miss's identity as a ghost is slowly revealed, and Genjuro's psychological disillusionment process is also very detailed. Finally, ending this scene in Genjuro's madness is undoubtedly also the main theme of the film: a constant generation and disillusionment of birth and desire.
Yes, death seems to have been intentionally weakened in this film, and life only appears as a desire. I think this is also a characteristic of the Japanese Warring States Period. The lives of people, especially peasants, seem to be just the one going in and out of the samurai sword. In this kind of indifferent conception of life, people are more to pursue desire, including the desire for things and the desire for fame. In fact, what ultimately disillusioned the original desires of the two men was not death or something else, but the generation of a new desire: the desire for family and love.
But I actually think that one of the weaknesses of Japanese directors is that they are slightly weak in digging into the characters. It feels that to a large extent, it only excavated part of human's shallower desires. For example, "Rashomon", although it can be said to be Kurosawa Akira's most famous film for digging out human nature, for me it is just thinking "from that person's perspective." What does that mean? It means that we only care about this character's thoughts during this period of time, and we don't care how he came up with this idea. This actually caused the lack of a logical chain. For example, the cause of "Rashomon" was just that the thief played by Toshiro Mifune was interested in a woman, and the complexity of the characters was only shown through some simplest examples, such as robbery of the rich and the poor. But we don't know how he created such a complexity. This is basically the case in "Yuyue Monogatari", we only know that Fujijuro gave up his armor because of his wife, but we don't know whether he is because of love or because of his wife's humiliation. But for example, Fellini's "Amacorde" is different. The scenes it presents are completely the most direct scenes in our minds, the imagination of sex and the imagination of family affection; these are obviously more basic elements of human nature.
Among Japanese directors, the one who digs deeper is Ozu. In his "Tokyo Story", in fact, such an image of an old couple and children are very symbolic, and there are definitely such people around us. Ozu just reproduced very truly how these symbolic characters talk to each other and live in the real life of our lives.
In fact, it is interesting that such a feature seems to be well integrated with the times. We found that after World War II, the initial time of Japan's rapid rise was probably around the 50s and 60s. According to Japanese friends, the Japanese at that time worked desperately, digging tunnels to build Shinkansen; some of them even died suddenly at work. Perhaps Japan at that time emphasized a more collectivist concept. So they rarely think about the causes of an individual's personality like the West, or even Western European countries. Most of them just discuss how a person's character should survive in this world.
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