Rent Ugetsu Monogatari (1953)

Medieval Ghosts. - Ugetsu Monogatari review by Steve

Exotic, esoteric ghost story set in the feudal middle ages which gave western audiences a taste for the Japanese occult. It’s inspired by a series of 18th century tales (by Ueda Akinari) but was adapted by Kenji Mizoguchi to reflect on the recent WWII.

And in particular, the brutal treatment of Japanese women by their own soldiers. During a civil war, two wives are abandoned by their reckless, vainglorious husbands. The men learn valuable wisdom from the intrusion of the spirits of the dead into their destinies.

Meanwhile, their women suffer abominably. There is an impression that existence in medieval Japan is so wretched and capricious that people exist in some indefinite space between life and death, realism and fantasy. And the line between is fragile.

Mizoguchi permeates this indeterminate margin with shadowy, hazy enchantment. This is a beautiful, ethereal parable, enhanced by a percussive score of dissonant atmospherics. Now this is called folk horror; and it was hugely influential in creating an image in the west of what Japanese cinema is.