Chikamatsu Monogatari

Kenji Mizoguchi - 1954
This is one of the busier of Mizoguchi's works I have seen. The close views aren't too obvious, but the long takes are, in the enclosed rooms, and later the enclosed forests, that I'm coming to associate, with the twinkling lights that just creep around, with Mizoguchi. Again we have tragic love, the figure of the women as the noble survivor, the good natured by rather weak man, and the evil man.
Mizoguchi and Deleuze (did the latter write on the former?); there's a weird combination. Here's my thinking. Mizoguchi is known as taking a relation to emotion that is not direct sympathy. In earlier entries I have talked about swirling effects in Mizoguchi, the idea of the lack of specificity ('A' Emotion / 'A' Life) in this portrayal. Add to this what I keep coming across in Mizoguchi (but forgot to mention in earlier entires); the idea of excess. His females, looking for love generally, for cosy home life, are, frankly insane. They are insane masochists. In Oyu-Sama the younger sister originally basically commits herself to a life of misery for another, giving more than she has; excess. Look at the face of Zushio as he goes to the advisor in Sancho Dayu. The idea od mysticism in Mizoguchi, excess, love beyond the exchnage principle, the sacrifice of this, the end of 'Ugetsu Monogatari'. For all the decorum, his is a cinema of insanity. But portrayed quite calmly.