Mizoguchi's film is sad in one word. All of his greatest works show the process of those good people being devastated and destroyed by the evil of human nature in the context of the times. Even though the chef king successfully avenged Dr. Sanjiao, at the end of the film, when his mother who was blind and paralyzed appeared in the camera, life was still worse for the chef king and his entire family. Mizoguchi seems to be very keen on making audiences taste bitter stories with poetic action shots and mise-en-scene.
At the end of the Heian period, Iwagi's parents, Guan Heizheng, who were honest and caring for the people, were scolded by colleagues for violating the orders of the imperial court to help the victims, and were demoted and sent to Tsukushi. Seven years later, Heisei's wife, Tamaki, took their 13-year-old son Chef Wang, 8-year-old daughter Anshou, and her grandmother to Chikushi to find her husband. As a result, they were deceived by the traffickers when they were looking for someone to help cross the river. The traffickers controlled the cook Wang, An Shou and grandma to leave on the boat, and pushed the old and useless grandma into the water in the middle of the river to drown. The mother was controlled by human traffickers on the shore and sold to a brothel to become a prostitute. The Chef Wang and Anshou were sold as slaves to Doctor Sansho. Doctor Sanjiao is abusive. As long as any slaves are disobedient or lazy, they will be brutally punished, such as branding on their bodies, foreheads, or being severely beaten. The same is true of the brothel where the mother is located. The mother misses her two children day and night, constantly shouting their names. When she was caught trying to escape, the brothel owner ordered her mother's hamstrings to be broken... but the disabled mother still came to the river with a cane and called out the children's names.
Ten years later, the grown-up cooks Wang and Anshou are still enslaved by Doctor Sanjiao. The Chef King has become Doctor Sanjiao's right-hand man, who punishes slaves according to Doctor Sanjiao's orders. And An Shou was still kind, and asked the Chef King why he betrayed his original intention. One of Anshou's "colleagues" fell ill, and Dr. Sansho ordered her to be abandoned in the wild. The Cook King and An Shou carried her to the mountain together, which was the Cook King's proposal to escape. An Shou decides to stay for cover in order for the cook king to escape smoothly. The cook king successfully escapes to a temple with his sick "colleague" on his back. And An Shou, after completing the cover, knew that he could not escape the magic of Doctor Sanjiao and chose to commit suicide by throwing himself into the river. With the help of the monks, the Cook King escaped capture and became an official through promotion and his father's glory. He eventually ordered the liberation of the slaves and took revenge on Doctor Sansho. But when she learned that An Shou committed suicide, she resigned from her official position and searched for her mother alone, and finally saw her gray-haired and appalling mother. The mother kept whispering the names of Chef Wang and An Shou, and the last scene was very sad.
Obviously, the story of this film is not completely completed according to Mizoguchi Kenji's original intention. Otherwise, the name of the movie should not be Doctor Sanjiao, because the whole story is based on the chef king, and Doctor Sanjiao is just a villain who does not appear many times. But aside from those helpless elements outside the movie, the movie itself is excellent enough, regardless of Mizoguchi Kenji's signature camera movement, scheduling, or the emotional appeal of the story itself.
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