The Life of Oharu

Kenji Mizoguchi's stunning masterpiece is a heartbreaking tale of purity in a world of corruption. Based on a seventeenth-century novel by Saikaku Ihara called The Woman Who Loved Love, the film tells the story of Oharu, a young woman who in her younger days worked as a lady-in-waiting at the Imperial Palace of Kyoto, but having fallen in love with a man below her rank is expelled from the palace, and she and her parents are forced to live in exile. Try as she might to find love in her relationships, she is constantly thwarted by her society's low expectations for a woman's heart and her father's ambitions for respectability, and soon descends to being a concubine, later a streetwalking prostitute. Mizoguchi's tones are so gentle and poetic that every frame works its way into your heart, and in such a delicate manner. Kinuyo Tanaka's performance as Oharu is beautiful as well, abandoning the melodramatic gestures common to Japanese film acting and going straight for the heart. Sumptuous production design and a decidedly feminist message make a film well worth seeing.

I finally saw Life of Oharu at the Ontario Cinematheque in Toronto last night and what an amazing film it was.

I don't know why I held out on Mizoguchi for so long. I think it's because I watched a lot of Ozu in the day and expected more of the same heavily restrained, obliquely symbolic style which is often as alienating as it is inventive. I couldn't have been further off the mark. Mizoguchi's style is fluid and assured like Hitchcock and Bresson. He also injects a warmth of spirit and shows a genuine interest in storytelling which is often absent in much of Ozu's ouevre.

The Story of Oharu is a treatise on how women are economically exploited in a patriarchal society. This is probably one of the greatest 'women's films' ever made. It ranks above 'Breaking The Waves' and Sirk's 'Imitation of Life'. No small feat!! If you like stories that actually say something about the world in which we live, I would strongly recommend this film. It's a masterpiece of world cinema. I am definitely going to see more Mizoguchi.

I cannot agree with the reviewer who commented that Mizoguchi does not have the aesthetic sensibility of Kurosawa or Ozu. In fact, he appears to me to be the true master of Japanese cinema. 'Oharu' is a marvellous achievement - a compassionate, beautiful account of a quite astonishing fall from privilege and grace into destitution and despair. It is unremittingly bleak and yet due to Mizoguchi's genius and Kinuyo Tanaka's luminous portrayal of the unlucky Oharu, it is a spiritually compelling work, with sheer artistry and simple human empathy competing for our attention in every take. Breathtaking film-making of the highest quality.

Deeply tragic and sad tale that is nevertheless presented to us with great dignity and style. A tale of the harshness of feudal Japan and the way the men treat the women is unfortunately not without its echo, even today in that great country. A woman here, originally of noble beginnings, makes bad, then good, then more and more bad and none of it of her making. She is simply the result in men's dealings and hypocrisies. Still beautiful to look at though with the magical camera-work and immaculate direction. Some slight confusions at first until we realise that time jumps at the blink of an eye and before we know it one period has slid effortlessly into another, where inevitably another tragedy awaits our fallen heroine.

It was sickening to witness how Ohara was treated by the noble men of high rank and even by her father. She is a strong and proud woman, but she has a series of misfortunes of things she could not very well control herself. Because of her looks, her pride and her birth she is put, mostly by force, into various agreements that are disgrading and she meets little compassion.

That said, as this is based on a novel by Iharu Saikaku, it has strong tendencies towards being epic in approach. This is not a bad thing, but it takes on being a fairytale almost instead of gaining credibility like say 'Donzoko' by Kurosawa. For emotional impact Mizoguchi is an absolute master however and this tragic tale could not be outdone by any other.