Tales of Ugetsu (1953)

Earlier this week I watched the first few episodes of Joan of Arcadia, an unremarkable teen drama about a girl visited by God and given seemingly silly tasks -- "try out as a cheerleader" -- which inevitably cascade into a disproportionately positive butterfly effect. One of my half-dozen reasons for despising it is that every episode is blatantly didactic: there's a capital-tee Theme, like "teen pregnancy", which is painfully driven home as a moral lesson.

This kind of moral tale is déclassé in film because the directness is almost offensively simplistic. Plot and character are important, but can't be taken seriously if they exist as nothing more than transparent vehicles for a lesson; if the lesson isn't subtle or otherwise interesting, the entire work is fatally compromised. Modern audiences prefer stories which are interesting as stories: if a life-lesson can be drawn from them, so much the better, but it certainly isn't necessary. The bad guys sometimes get away with it.

Ugetsu, though, recalls an earlier mode. Based on stories by Ueda Akinari, an 18th century Japanese author, it's just the sort of purposeful story now crushed by the weight of postmodern relativism and reflexivity.

Genjuro (Masayuki Mori) and Tobei (Eitaro Ozawa) are peasants with dreams of bigger things. With prices driven up by the war, Genjuro wants to sell more pottery and buy his wife fine clothes; Tobei aspires to being a rich samurai, despite his lack of fighting ability. Their wives plead that they're happy as they are, but both men set out to achieve their goals. The consequences are terrible.

It doesn't lack in depth, but the construction is simple and the central lesson is clear; the film's charm is in its perfect style and execution. It's beautiful to look at and beautiful to hear, even if it seems "obvious" -- it's like a haiku, or tea ceremony, or kata, with power and grace arising from clear form and structure, not in spite of it. It's amazingly good.

See also: Phillip Lopate's Criterion essay.