I gave Kenji Mizoguchi's crowning achievement a deserving 9/10. When one has experienced the images the plot becomes more meaningful, and the result is one of the most beautiful films one will ever witness. There is not a lot I can further say about this beautiful film except that it is best taken on an image by image base with the real plot as a second consideration. He successfully does what all great artists do, he makes his art truly great and therefore truly subjective. In doing this Mizoguchi distances some viewers, while at the same time bringing many to a level impossible with any other director (Eastern or Western). The camera moves much slower as to give you a sense of your surroundings, to allow the film to become part of you. It brings an element of sheer beauty I have not been acquainted with by any Japanese director. Though it is not nearly as accessible a film as Kurosawa's period pieces of the same time, Ugetsu succeeds on a level that they do not. In the end the loss of what was important all along becomes apparent, and a message of humility becomes the films point. In time they both get to a point where this is a reality, where one of them fulfills what he desires, the other is led into a surrealistic haze by a demonic seductress. Throughout the film we see two peasants progressively grow to lust for the riches of the world, Genjurô desires to sell his wares and become wealthy, while Tobei desires to be a samurai and have power.

The film nonetheless has some very impressive subject matter to its credit, dealing with war, greed and the line between reality and the spiritual world. They alone say more then most films do in their entire message. A sabotaged boat drifting away in the fog with nothing but a dead man aboard, an enchantress' seduction of a naive peasant and a landscape dotted with danger and war, all make up some of the most beautiful images, that would not be out of place in a painting. What drew me into the film deepest was the usage of not style or substance (if that makes sense), but rather these images that remained on your mind long after the film was finished. Rather it attempts (successfully) to give a drawn out, slightly surrealistic atmosphere that exhibits images of lingering beauty throughout its short length. It neither has the ferocious, exiting energy that Kurosawa successfully utilized, nor the slow mundane nature that Ozu became known for. The film won Best Actress at the 2015 Japanese Academy Awards and the Audience Award and Best Actress following its world premiere at the 2014 Tokyo International Film Festival.Ugetsu is a film that separates itself from both period pieces of its time and from Japanese film of any era. A mischievous dark drama adapted from the bestselling novel by Mitsuyo Kakuta.

Rika Umezawa (Rie Miyazawa) lives with her husband, but without any children. Ordinary housewife and bank employee Rika (Rie Miyazawa) turns to a life of crime by embezzling money from clients’ accounts in order to please her young lover. Pale Moon (aka Kami no tsuki) (2014) film. Presenting films by established and up-and-coming directors, this year’s programme promises to not only entertain but also provide a vivid insight into what drives human action. So, when the Joker actually asked his question, he was probably having one of these two, or both of these things in mind: A. Taking inspiration from Charlie Chaplin’s famous quote “Life is a desire, not a meaning”, the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2017 features an all-encompassing introduction to Japanese cinema through the prism of “desires, hopes and impulses”. As far as the pale moonlight is concerned, the phrase could refer to the abyss, a philosophical term most famously used by Friedrich Nietzsche, that symbolizes a place of complete, utter darkness and hopelessness.

Pale moon film