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Director Kenji Mizoguchi again employs the repertoire of bunraku in this tale of lovers thwarted by the constricting feudal hierarchy of 17th-century Japan. Kyôko Kagawa and Kazuo Hasegawa star as, respectively, the wife, Osan, and clerk, Mohei, of Ishun (Eitarô Shindô), a wealthy and corrupt scrollmaker. When Osan's brother asks her for help in paying a debt, she turns to Mohei, who agrees to use his master's seal to dispense the money she needs. Although he refuses to implicate Osan, Mohei is forced to confess his actions to Ishun, who publicly humiliates the clerk and locks him in a storeroom. Through a series of complications, Ishun arrives at the mistaken belief that Osan and Mohei are lovers. Mohei is instantly dismissed and forced into exile. But when Ishun offers a seppuku knife to Osan, she refuses ritual suicide, knowing that she's committed no crime, and escapes from her husband's house. The director counterposes the high-angle shots, vertical architecture, and entrapping shadows of Ishun's establishment--visual metaphors for the rigidity of this feudal society--with the simple grandeur of nature--a visual metaphor for love--in a compelling denunciation of destructive social mores.
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| Genres: |
Art/Foreign |
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| MPAA Rating: |
Not Rated |
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In Theaters 
