La vie d'O'Haru femme galante

Mizoguchi's empathy for female characters is legendary. The Life of Oharu is one outstanding example. One woman's journey from member of the imperial court to elderly streetwalker is narrated in exquisite, shimmering, painful style. Oharu (Kinuyo Tanaka) is seduced by a man below her station. Her crime is to love the man back unreservedly. That action becomes the catalyst for a series of degradations punctuated by false dawns, as Oharu's life spirals to rock bottom. And as bleak and depressing as that sounds, Mizoguchi's storytelling, combined with Tanaka's dignified portrayal, make this film cathartic, a tragedy with a small, life-affirming message at its heart. It is a cautionary tale to the follies of social mores, and the burden that women through the ages have to endure. More than that, it is a tale of one woman's dignity through the most humiliating of circumstances. Stunning.

a fifty-year old prostitute in Japan has to live in poverty, because no man is interested in her services. She visits a temple and one of the statues resembles the young Samurai, with whom her decline began. Being a noble's daughter she was not allowed to marry him, he was executed and she and her family were expelled from the court. Thereafter one misfortune follows the other. All of her attempts to lead an honest and happy life fail. The film is set in beautiful Japanese landscape and architecture, in which the action of the is arranged with great care. You can feel the inhuman rigor of feudal society and court etiquette. Nevertheless, the aesthetic quality if the films is slightly lower than those of Ozu's and Kurosawa's films. A highly recommendable movie though(8).

'The Life of Oharu' is not an easy film to watch. There is barely even a fleeting moment of joy/happiness and towards the end, the viewer will find himself/herself getting really angry and outraged by the unthinkable oppression and atrocities and engulf our titular protagonist. Mizoguchi's sympathetic treatment of Oharu compels the viewer to feel beaten down and horrified by Oharu's miserable plight.

The long line of tragedies in Oharu's life gets triggered by her decision to fall in love with Katsunosuke(played by the legendary Toshirô Mifune), a man of lower social standing. This element of forbidden love was also present in the previous Mizoguchi film that I watched namely 'The Story of Last Chrysanthemum'. The story arc of Otoku in that film to a some extent resembles the arc of Oharu in this one in terms of the mental and physical torture that they are both subjected to. Oharu makes an effort to conform to society's deplorable expectations, but even then gets nothing to show for it and gets discarded. This is because once she falls in social standing and gets sold off by her family, she ceases to be a human being in the eyes of society. There is a lot of references to trade and business in 'The Life of Oharu' which is relevant because Oharu over the course of her life becomes nothing more than a commodity to be sold from one customer to the next in the patriarchal society of 17th century Japan.

Mizoguchi technical mastery is again on show in 'The Life of Oharu'. Some of the long takes and extended tracking shots are truly remarkable. Mizoguchi had the ability to suggest a plethora of things like passage of time, a change in mood, etc. with one little pan movement of the camera or with just the camera placement and those features are on show here too. The interior sets are beautifully designed and the haunting music by Ichirō Saitō is used craftily from time to time to set/change the mood. Kinuyo Tanaka has to be admired for lending the sympathy inducing tender innocence to Oharu. Her performance in the scenes depicting the later stages of Oharu's life is jaw-dropping in its authenticity and humanity.

To conclude, I have to reiterate that 'The Life of Oharu' is not for everyone. One has to be in a specific mood to be able to endure the emotionally crushing narrative and storytelling of the film. But having said that, I still believe that it needs to be watched as Oharu represents numerous women(of Japan and beyond) in history and present times whose lives were and are still getting destroyed due to an oppressive society which denigrates women. It is said that Mizoguchi's obsession with capturing the misery of women in the face of oppression had its roots in his own childhood as his own sister who raised him was sold by their father. One can sense a personal grief, a personal intimacy in the style of storytelling in this particular film. Highly Recommended.

Mizoguchi's films are capable, I think, of teaching life lessons without preaching or grandstanding. This film could cause a male chauvinist to join a consciousness-raising make sensitivity group. In a simple,understated way, the film outlines the tyrannies that made happiness almost impossible for women, not only in feudal Japan, but all over the world. It comments on the use of women's bodies as sex objects and baby-making machines, with no regard for women's minds or feelings. Notice, by the way, that Oharu (Kinuyo Tanaka)is supposed to age from 18 to 50-and she really seems to age although makeup in the 1950s was not as advanced an art as it is now. The aging process is achieved through Tanaka's acting. And if she does not seem to us to be quite the ravaged old "witch" that one of her customers claims she is, then so much the better to let us know that she is being judged by an insensitive society.

As this film opens, Oharu (Kinuyo Tanaka), a 50 year old prostitute, goes into a Buddhist temple and looks back at her life. We see that she was once loved, but because her young suitor (the great Toshiro Mifune) was of a lower caste, it was forbidden, resulting in her being banished and him being beheaded. As her family has been shamed, her father jumps on the chance to send her to a local Lord who is looking for a mistress who can be a surrogate mother. Unfortunately, she's abruptly dismissed after bearing him a son, and from there she steadily declines. The film was highly personal to director Kenji Mizoguchi since his own sister (who had raised him) was sold by their father to be a geisha, which is one of the things that happens to Oharu.

Like 'Ugetsu', the film Mizoguchi made the following year, 'The Life of Oharu' is a morality tale, and while it's less heavy-handed than 'Ugetsu', it is fairly melodramatic. The central message is one of Buddhist compassion, and not just for those who we know have had a sad, unfair life – but also those who appear derelict or decrepit to us, and who we might otherwise judge, not knowing what they've experienced. While there is depth to that message, and it's certainly nice seeing a film that empathizes with woman and the misogyny they endure, 'The Life of Oharu' is dark and hard to watch for 148 minutes. The plot is quite linear and we see her used and abused in every single societal role she plays: daughter, lover, concubine, courtesan, wife, nun, and common prostitute. I also don't think Tanaka was well utilized in this role – she simply doesn't look young enough in early scenes, or old enough in later scenes. The filmmaking is good and the film has a solid place in film history for its message, but it's too bleak, and too simplistically so, for a film of this length.