Masumura is probably the least subtle of the Japanese New Wavers. His characters wear their emotions on their sleeves, they're not only lost inside a maize of their own desires but they don't care to look for a way out, they are consumed by their passions to the bitter end. Masumura usually subverts audience expectations though, that's not all there is to his films, at some point something sinister is introduced and violence comes at play with something perverted and unexplained bubbling beneath the surface. His characters are governed by simple passions and a simple violence.
Seisaku's Wife is rural melodrama played out at a remove village at the turn of the century, good and bad is clearly defined at first and characters have little depth because they fall easily in one or the other category, and a series of events is foreshadowed early on. The doomed romance between the "adulteress" who comes back to the village of her mother with a small fortune she inherited as a mistress to an old man and the "hero soldier" who returns from the war a decorated officer and becomes a role-model of responsibility dutifulness and thrift for the village, the two of them fall in love and the village disapproves, you can almost see billows of a tragic ending in the distance, and you can sense it will come to pass with the incredible violence that lies at the heart of a small rural society intolerant to outsiders and those who are not willing to be swallowed whole by it.
For most of its duration the movie is a group of people with faces furrowed with suspicion huddled together to gossip, we observe that closely like we're called to share in the conspiring, then Seisaku is drafted again in the army and Okane, the mistress who is now his wife but still unwanted in the village, is thrown in a pit of despair, then Seisaku volunteers for a suicide mission and now we're in a crowd waving banners outside Seisaku's place waiting to celebrate his departure and from the inside come agonizing screams. Something horrible has come to pass, a simple violence coming from a simple passion.
Good and bad in the film wouldn't be out of favour with Calvin. The village is quickly shown to be a den of inequity, suspicion, jealousy, gossip, drinking, idleness all come at play, Seisaku seems to be the only one drafted to fight while the rest make drunken declarations and toast each other and make passes at his wife, Seisaku on the other hand the model citizen, responsible, thrift, disciplined, good natured, humble, but Masumura paints his portrait so that if we hang it on a wall and looked at it from a distance the details would mesh into something that looked a bit different, like a diabolical parody of itself. Masumura suggests that Seisaku is maybe too much of a 'role-model', a little neurotic in his pursuit of that role, and he confirms that again in the film's denouement, "thanks to you I am a normal man now" Seisaku says to Okane. Now he is flawed, not just through an act of violence done to him but through his capacity to forgive it, and more human for that.
This is all mostly restrained for a New Wave film and shot in static setups, but I love it when Seisaku fantasizes about Okane's life in prison and we get expressionist images of a grey purgatory of souls where the inmates wander automaton-like in eternal damnation carrying huge chains behind them. Or when Seisaku writhes on the floor, blood spattering black on his white clothes like an angel fallen from grace. Seisaku's Wife is like a traditional folk story, a cautionary tale against prejudice and intolerance, it doesn't end in bloodshed and vengeance like one might expect, but with quiet affirmation - in the end love heals all.
Seisaku's Wife is rural melodrama played out at a remove village at the turn of the century, good and bad is clearly defined at first and characters have little depth because they fall easily in one or the other category, and a series of events is foreshadowed early on. The doomed romance between the "adulteress" who comes back to the village of her mother with a small fortune she inherited as a mistress to an old man and the "hero soldier" who returns from the war a decorated officer and becomes a role-model of responsibility dutifulness and thrift for the village, the two of them fall in love and the village disapproves, you can almost see billows of a tragic ending in the distance, and you can sense it will come to pass with the incredible violence that lies at the heart of a small rural society intolerant to outsiders and those who are not willing to be swallowed whole by it.
For most of its duration the movie is a group of people with faces furrowed with suspicion huddled together to gossip, we observe that closely like we're called to share in the conspiring, then Seisaku is drafted again in the army and Okane, the mistress who is now his wife but still unwanted in the village, is thrown in a pit of despair, then Seisaku volunteers for a suicide mission and now we're in a crowd waving banners outside Seisaku's place waiting to celebrate his departure and from the inside come agonizing screams. Something horrible has come to pass, a simple violence coming from a simple passion.
Good and bad in the film wouldn't be out of favour with Calvin. The village is quickly shown to be a den of inequity, suspicion, jealousy, gossip, drinking, idleness all come at play, Seisaku seems to be the only one drafted to fight while the rest make drunken declarations and toast each other and make passes at his wife, Seisaku on the other hand the model citizen, responsible, thrift, disciplined, good natured, humble, but Masumura paints his portrait so that if we hang it on a wall and looked at it from a distance the details would mesh into something that looked a bit different, like a diabolical parody of itself. Masumura suggests that Seisaku is maybe too much of a 'role-model', a little neurotic in his pursuit of that role, and he confirms that again in the film's denouement, "thanks to you I am a normal man now" Seisaku says to Okane. Now he is flawed, not just through an act of violence done to him but through his capacity to forgive it, and more human for that.
This is all mostly restrained for a New Wave film and shot in static setups, but I love it when Seisaku fantasizes about Okane's life in prison and we get expressionist images of a grey purgatory of souls where the inmates wander automaton-like in eternal damnation carrying huge chains behind them. Or when Seisaku writhes on the floor, blood spattering black on his white clothes like an angel fallen from grace. Seisaku's Wife is like a traditional folk story, a cautionary tale against prejudice and intolerance, it doesn't end in bloodshed and vengeance like one might expect, but with quiet affirmation - in the end love heals all.