Women's prudence, women's shyness, women's meekness, is this the symbol of women bound by irresistible Japanese habits? —— Yasunari Kawabata, "Maihime"
But anyone who has seen Kenji Mizoguchi's film will be left with such an impression, the film has a natural implication, the characters in the film are restrained and stoic, and the whole movie flows with soothing poetry. In the field of film art, Kenji Mizoguchi's films are typical representatives of oriental aesthetics, his films have no rapid editing, no close-ups, and the film presents a natural beauty.
If you compare the many works of Kenji Mizoguchi together, you can find that there are many similar plots in his films, the most typical of which is the sacrifice and fulfillment of women for men. This spirit of female sacrifice is the basic main line of Kenji Mizoguchi's films, and in different movies, this sacrifice has evolved into different versions, but the story line has never changed.
For example, in the 1936 film "The Lamentation of Langhua", Kenji Mizoguchi portrayed Ayako, a woman who sacrificed for her family. Ayako's father embezzled public funds and faced jail time, and Ayako had to become the lover of the company owner in order to save her father. At the same time, Ayako also has to find a way to help her brother who is studying at university. Ayako's sacrifice was a fulfillment of her family, but it was not respected for it.
In the 1949 film My Love Is Burning, Kenji Mizoguchi directs his sacrifice at Hideko Eiko Eiko Eiko, a female fighter in the liberal civil rights movement. In order to fulfill her husband, Jingshan Hideko resolutely made sacrifices. And her husband did not understand her sacrifice, but instead looked for flowers and asked Willow. Unable to forgive her husband, Eiko Jingshan left her husband after sacrificing everything.
In the 1951 film Miss Ayou, Ayou's husband died, but thanks to the company of her sister A Jing, her life was less boring. When her sister Ah Jing meets her fiancé, her fiancé recognizes Ah You as Ah Jing and falls in love with Ah You. In order to complete the younger sister, the sister quit their life. In order to fulfill her sister, the younger sister became a nominal wife. Both sisters are sacrificing themselves for each other's happiness.
The Tale of the Remnant
In Kenji Mizoguchi's pinnacle work, The Tale of the Remnant, he took this sacrifice to the extreme. The maid fell in love with the young master, worked hard for the young master, and after the young master became famous, she chose to quit. This film is different from Kenji Mizoguchi's previous films, although at the same time women's sacrifice, in this film, it is more women's perception of their own identity, both the desire for equality and the need to be respected.
If we want to understand feminism in Kenji Mizoguchi's films, we must take "The Tale of the Remnant" as the core. Now let's take a look at how to understand the theme of Kenji Mizoguchi's consistent film through this movie.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-center-line" > women's rebellion against inequality</h1>
In "The Tale of the Remnant Chrysanthemum", the heroine is a maid from a famous kabukicho family, she is innocent and kind, and she always gives a pertinent judgment on the acting skills of the young master of the house, and the maid's behavior has always emphasized that she should be equal to the young master.
From the perspective of identity setting, in the Japanese society of the feudal period, women and men were not equal. In this movie, the same is true. One was a maid and the other was a young master. But the maid in this movie puts herself on an equal footing with the young master.
She never made a promise because of her identity, and in the process of talking to the young master, her speech and demeanor exceeded her own identity, so in this movie, being a maid and a woman and a man are equal.
Such a setting is actually a kind of rebellion of women. They did not abide by the established status rules of feudal society, but let themselves be above this rule, and this resistance carried a certain sense of awakening. In feminism, awakening is the core vocabulary, and different films have different understandings and manifestations of feminism. In Kenji Mizoguchi, feminism is pluralistic and complex, and cannot be summed up in a few simple words.
In fact, for women, Mizoguchi Kenji always has a sense of compassion in it, perhaps because his sister was once a geisha, so he projected his feelings for his sister on the character to express his gratitude to his sister. From an artistic point of view, each director has his own style of expertise, such as Akira Kurosawa who excels at grand narratives, Yasujiro Ozu who excels at gentle family scenes, and Kenji Mizoguchi where women's films are the best way for him to show off his talents.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-center-line" > women's desire to be respected</h1>
Being respected is a core requirement in feminism, and the maid in "The Tale of the Remnant" is appreciated by the young master, so the relationship between them transcends that of ordinary masters and servants, and the ambiguous emotions in them make them between friendship and love.
The subtle emotions between women and men are very special in any film, and through the depiction of such feelings, it is possible to glimpse the deeper needs of women and men. In this film, the maid wants to be respected, and being respected is the key to the extension and escalation of emotions.
In getting along with the young master, the maid did desire love and care, but due to her identity, the two always maintained the right distance. This deliberate distance actually included the young master's disdain for the maid's status. As clever as Kenji Mizoguchi, he did not directly express the young master's concern for his identity, just setting a distance between the two of them, he could show the psychological characteristics of the characters.
As the relationship between the two escalated, so did the criticism. People around them believe that the maid is for the young master's family property, and the young master is coveting the beauty of the maid. This criticism is a blasphemy against the relationship between two people and provides a reason for the maid's desire to be respected.
There are many examples of women not being valued in Japanese films, especially in male-dominated films. Most women are merely appendages of men, and they exist for sacrificial and fulfillment purposes only. But in Mizoguchi Kenji, women's sacrifices are not all forced helplessness, but contain women's dedication and self-awareness, the purpose of which is to exchange this sacrifice and fulfillment for women's right to be respected.
I think Kenji Mizoguchi is here to express the struggle of women, but this struggle is not intuitively reflected in his picture-like movie. This is actually the characteristic of Kenji Mizoguchi's film style, there is no fierce resistance, and all the fulfillment and sacrifice occur naturally.
< h1 class= "pgc-h-center-line" > women willingly sacrifice</h1>
The sacrifice of the maid in "The Tale of the Remnant" is absolutely willing, and in the process of getting along with the young master for a long time, there will be some ambiguous emotions between the two people. This emotion eventually becomes "love," but this "love" does not arise spontaneously, but is based on the self-sacrifice of the maid.
The young master's acting skills were criticized by his father, and the young master at this time was in a state of isolation. The maid instructed the young master's acting skills, so that the young master's acting skills were improved, and he found an identity in the maid, which was the male determination of his identity and charm.
In this kind of feeling, there is both the young master's rebellion against patriarchy and his search for a sense of existence, and the two combine to form the "love" between the maid and the young master. In the feudal era, it was difficult for two men and women with unequal identities to produce pure love, and women hoped to get a more stable foundation of life through men with rich economic conditions, while men would more or less be moved by women's beauty.
In "The Tale of the Remnant", Kenji Mizoguchi has preset the ending of this relationship, and the maid has already known the result of this relationship through various times, but she still chooses dedication and sacrifice, and this fearless spirit is the noblest praise for women that Mizoguchi wants to express.
The maid's sacrifice had a deeper meaning, a rebellion against the young master's entire family. In this family, even her own status was irritated by the insults of the young master's family. So, her sacrifice was also a rebellion against the family.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" > women to quit just right</h1>
The offering was followed by the maid's withdrawal. When the young master decided to marry her, she returned the young master to his family and let him continue to fight in his career. This withdrawal was not full of resentment, but with a passion, pushed the young master to his family.
After the maid withdrew from the young master's life, what awaited her was not victory and freedom after the rebellion, but death. But this kind of death is not a tragic death, but a desperate death after the end of a war of resistance. In this unequal relationship, she exhausted all of it, so that she did not have enough strength to face the rest of her life.
This just right withdrawal not only completed the young master's family, preserved his reputation and career, but also freed the maid from the unequal and disrespected reality. The maid knew very well that the relationship between her and the young master was not only love, but also more complicated factors in it, and she could not admit this relationship straightly, so she could not accept it head-on.
Kenji Mizoguchi arranged a better solution for the maid's withdrawal, and although it eventually fell into the cliché of death, the struggle that preceded it highlighted the cries and cries of women in the feudal period for an unjust fate. After the young master, back to normal life, Mizoguchi Kenji did not make a moral criticism of the behavior of the male characters in the movie, because the death of the maid is the best irony.
Kenji Mizoguchi is one of the most die-hard film masters among Japanese artists, his films have always revolved around traditional Japanese culture, and the feminism under his lens is deeply rooted in Japanese literature. He put feminism far from the reality of life on the screen, revealing the dilemma of women's survival in real life through a strong classical meaning.
There is no face-to-face confrontation, no fierce words and actions, and women's rebellion, like their tenderness, converges into a complete form of rebellion through fulfillment and sacrifice. However, this form of rebellion is like a stone thrown into the lake in a society with men as the core, with waves, but eventually sinks to the bottom of the lake.
We can't change reality through a movie or a story, and Kenji Mizoguchi, a master of feminism, knows this. Therefore, what he pursues is not simply to praise the spirit of female sacrifice, but to use this sacrifice to satirize the injustices of the patriarchal society, which is a mockery of men in the abnormal social structure of men's and women's rights. In turn, through this ridicule, the sleeping conscience is awakened, so that women can be truly respected and loved.