BFI Top 50: Ugetsu Monogatari, Released in 1953, Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi

What I know going in

I know the film mainly consists of still photographs with voiceover, with one scene being a notable exception. I have listened to people talk about the film, so I know it has to do with the slippery nature of memory and time travel. I also know that the film was the inspiration for 12 Monkeys, directed by Terry Gilliam and also involving time travel to stop a viral outbreak. The film is considered one the landmark works of French New Wave, and this will be the first FNW film I have seen. I am not really sure how the odd composition of the film will work, but I am excited to find out.

My immediate reaction

Well… that was totally unlike anything I have seen before. I will give the movie, I have never seen a movie remotely resembling this, and I don’t think I ever will. I’m not even sure if this is a movie, or maybe it’s the most filmic of any movie ever. Technically speaking, a movie is a continuous stream of pictures that are designed to give the illusion of movement, a moving picture if you will. Although the movie is a series of still photographs, it is still able to effectively convey what is going on. The movie begins with the destruction of the world, which is conveyed through picture of a destroyed Paris during World War II. This is already suggestive of the recursive nature of the film’s narrative. As we will see at the end of the film, what has been observed once will happen again. The narrator then speaks of a child who has the image of a beautiful woman and a man dying burned into his brain. This image is so strong that the protagonist is used by a shadowy group, who only speaks German (maybe implying that they are responsible for the war?), to travel back in time. The protagonist then begins slip through time and repeatedly encounters the same woman over and over again.

Here is where the message of the movie began to gel for me. The protagonist appears to be unable to stay with the woman from the past. To me, this represents the frustration of relying on memory to recall past events. Once we stop experiencing a certain moment, we can no longer come back to it, and only the most significant, powerful, and important events of our lives have any hope of being recalled. But, even these powerful moments can be distorted as we forget the tiny details. Ultimately, the protagonist is able to return to the memory of his childhood, but is killed by his captors, completing the image from his childhood. He is essentially punished for trying to live in the past. Try as we might, we can never return the past, whether that be through time travel or through our own memories, what’s done is done and it can never be returned to.

Further thoughts

The procession of still images and the voiceover narration give the movie an almost documentary-like feel. Like this footage has been sent back time to warn us about what may come to pass if we continue in our current direction.

I’m going to be honest here; I have found a lot of the film to be impenetrable beyond my initial thoughts. Reading other analyses has not really helped that much. It has pointed out that the film was made around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and of course during the Cold War. This does give the film some extra heft as a warning about what will happen if the nuclear arms race is allowed to continue. Humans may become just like the animals seen in the museum, lifeless and on display.

I have not yet mentioned the brief scene of actual movement in the film. During a montage of the girl waking up, she briefly blinks her eyes. For one brief moment, we can truly experience the beauty of this moment. This reveals the true power of film, through film and beyond our own memory, we can reshape the past and achieve some type of truth, even if it incredibly brief.

Why is it on the list?

Like I said earlier, the film is defiantly unlike anything else I have seen. It examines the nature of memory, the power of film, the cycle of time, and the implications of the Cold War. That it does all of these in less than 30 minutes and without most of tools cinema makes use of, makes it inclusion easily defendable.