I really struggle with this movie. Were it not for that aforementioned bittersweet ending, it'd definitely be one of my least favourite films on this list. I can't help but feel it's one of many canonical films that conflate torture with character building and suffering with profundity. Beyond the overwhelming sense of injustice, there really isn't much going one with any of the characters here, including Sansho. I'd argue all the suffering is irrelevant to the point the film is actually trying to make. It actually speaks to an assumed lack of empathy on behalf of the audience that Mizoguchi et al would think we'd need to see an hour of a man suffering the horrors of slavery to understand why he would be so vehemently against later on. I'm a Jamaican man. I get it. When retelling the story of Abraham Lincoln, we don't need to see him working the plantation to understand why the Civil War happened.
I was watching this movie on an airplane on my laptop and my wife was sitting next to me reading or whatever. By the end of the movie, she was raptly watching with me despite not having headphones, and crying at the beautiful ending. What a film!
"Though Sansho doesn’t have the supernatural qualities of Ugetsu..."
That's true but part of breaking the spell is Zushio hearing Tamaki's song of woe, whether it's just in his head or some kind of surreal emotional communication off in the distance. I find that moment quite affecting. How do you read it?
One of those great movies I'll only see once, because it's too painful to ever watch again
I really struggle with this movie. Were it not for that aforementioned bittersweet ending, it'd definitely be one of my least favourite films on this list. I can't help but feel it's one of many canonical films that conflate torture with character building and suffering with profundity. Beyond the overwhelming sense of injustice, there really isn't much going one with any of the characters here, including Sansho. I'd argue all the suffering is irrelevant to the point the film is actually trying to make. It actually speaks to an assumed lack of empathy on behalf of the audience that Mizoguchi et al would think we'd need to see an hour of a man suffering the horrors of slavery to understand why he would be so vehemently against later on. I'm a Jamaican man. I get it. When retelling the story of Abraham Lincoln, we don't need to see him working the plantation to understand why the Civil War happened.
I was watching this movie on an airplane on my laptop and my wife was sitting next to me reading or whatever. By the end of the movie, she was raptly watching with me despite not having headphones, and crying at the beautiful ending. What a film!
"Though Sansho doesn’t have the supernatural qualities of Ugetsu..."
That's true but part of breaking the spell is Zushio hearing Tamaki's song of woe, whether it's just in his head or some kind of surreal emotional communication off in the distance. I find that moment quite affecting. How do you read it?