Yogi's Movie Consumption Blog

A courtlady falls in love with a man of lower social standing. As the two lovers are discovered the woman falls steeply through all social nets until she reaches rock bottom. There is no change of direction in the downward spiraling tale of the continually humiliated Oharu, no matter how hard we wish for a bit of luck for the poor woman. She rarely gets any opportunity to take a decision that might influence her fate. Nevertheless, she ends up at the bottom of the ancient Japanese society with no hope of returning to any kind of standing. The brutality of the men in her life, including her father is maddening. The only glimpse of a cynical practicality is when all the outlawed women solidarise, sharing what little resources are available to them. At one point, Oharu meets an older street musician who seems to have shared the fate of Oharu but has sunken even deeper. Although Oharu is polite to the poor lady you can still feel the importance of status to Oharu. Inside Oharu's...

A printer is in love with his master's wife: When they are forced to elope through a series of unfortunate events, their romance is deemed. I enjoyed the move thoroughly. What seems a bland a beginning quickly turns to an amour-fou situation. The fugitive lovers are being chased by various factions, but mainly to restore the printer's reputation. The two lovers are depicted as irrational in most of their decisions, and also quite stupid. They don't seem to be able to see beyond the confines of the system they are trying to break out of. That's why their pursuers have an easy time of tracking them down. Actually, most of the sub-plots would have allowed the lovers to escape, but in every single case they chose not to do it. So at the end, all they have left is to bare the consequences of their actions and be proud of them. There is a bit of a strange moment in the end, when the servants comment on the happy air of her former mistress. Maybe Mizoguchi wanted...

The 47 loyal ronin revenge the death of their master years after his unfair death sentence. This version of the famous japanese tale depicts the events that lead to the seppuku of Lord Asano and the regrouping of the 47 samurai and their careful planning to get Lord Kira's head, the person that was responsible for their master's death. I preferred Mizoguchi's version of 1947 where Asano's death was simply recounted, not shown. This epic rendering of the story comes across as a bit heavy-handed. There are way too many characters it tries to follow - and most of them are not very convincing. This sheer mass of different sidelines results in the appearing characters being very two-dimensional and the scenes they play out a bit clichéd. In some of the scenes I wasn't even sure, whose story was told presently. From what I gather, it looks like Toho wanted to present a mass-audience compatible version, throwing in a lot of the stars. Mifune has his role, but ...

A Samurai's son is forced to marry his son to the former mistress of his lord. I was already fascinated by the title sequence. The succession of images of roofs and shingles were visually mesmerizing and subtly establish one of the underlying themes of the story: Everybody has to stay aligned to tradition to keep the structure intact. But Mifunes character is stubborn and his fellow Samurai call him that. Although he flatly refuses his lord to wed his son to the dismissed wife of his lord, he is genuinely impressed when he realizes that the couple has taken a liking to each other. He realizes pretty fast that his own life has been full of ambition but devoid of happiness. So again he starts to struggle to make his son's life better than his. At some point the reason for Mifune's stubbornness becomes moot and he keeps on fighting for a higher ideal: Feelings of even a simple vassal should be honored even by the highest lord. During this quixotic battle he become...

A bar hostess tries to survive in the Ginko area in Tokyo without losing her dignity. The film was an amazing watch. Although all the situations were set up in a classical structure, the payoff was totally unexpected and lends the story an incredible amount of realism. The cultural clashes between traditional and modern Japan are just as beautifully rendered as the dilemmas of Keiko: should she descend into prostitution, or live a poor life while at the same time disappointing her family that disapproves of her profession. The film is perfectly cast with Hideko Takamine. I haven't seen her in films before, but I'll definitively watch out for her. She brings just the right amount of vulnerability, determination and gentleness to the character. It's simply a joy to watch her perform on screen. No wonder she was a star in Japan in the time. I also liked the camera work: beautifully shot, yet unobtrusive. Naruse has managed to edit the images into a seamless flow, ...

5 crazy stories in Japan entangle into a even crazier potpourri of action, comedy and brutal murders. All story lines develop independently from each other. A crazy artist tries to continually kill his wife, but every time he inters her body in the woods, he finds her resurrected when he returns home. And her intentions are revengeful. A frustrated marketing woman tries to take revenge on her chauvinistic lover, a group of burglars with repressed homosexual feelings and a British killer and his translator roam the streets of Japan. The underlying theme here is acceptance and through all the weirdness of this movie the general motive of everyone is to be accepted by everybody else. In itself a wonderful idea, although I had the feeling that "I'm a Cyborg, but that's OK" handles the same subject much more efficiently and gratifying. The ending of two stories is surprising and quite beautiful. I loved the bird man story. It was touching and funny at the sa...

A married couple goes through a difficult time, even contemplating a break-up. It's really hard to find something in the storyline - it sounds transparently thin and boring when compressed to one sentence. Nevertheless, as always Ozu has managed to create a whole universe with not much else in it than that very unspectacular married couple. The biggest event/crisis in their lives is, when he is supposed to go to work in South America and she doesn't let him tell her the news. There are also some highly interesting observations about Japanese marriage culture. As the couples get wed by recommendation, not by love there is a potential generational conflict, plus a high social acceptance for adultery or having a mistress. The strange calmness of Ozu's films is gripping so strongly anytime - and I'm still trying to figure out how he did it. His beautiful shots of empty corridors, hallways, and other living spaces evoke strong emotions. At the beginning of the film t...

An insect collector is lured into a sand dune where the locals decide to keep him imprisoned. A wonderful story and it's amazing how this works in this extremely confined space of the dunes. As the two inhabitants of the dune turn against and then for each other I was easily swayed back and forth with feeling sorry for the woman for not having any other opportunity to exist and the then again for the man for being trapped down there. The female character is endlessly kind and the man is rather brutal, ignorant and selfish - I didn't think that the man already changed the attitude towards the woman at the end of the movie, but one could definitively see the ground shift, he was standing on. The shots of the sand dunes are amazing and they took on very different meanings throughout the movie.