Film Ugetsu monogatari (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)

I returned to Manbites Dog Theater tonight for the second night of the Japanese film festival after seeing one of my favorite films, Tokyo Story, at the first night of the festival. I saw Ugetsu monogatari at 7:30p; it was a film about two couples who fought for their survival during wartime in feudal Japan. One of the husbands has his heart set at becoming a samurai at almost any cost, and the other, a potter (and farmer, as I recall) seems to lose his sense of balance in life and care for his family in a sudden material interest in making and selling as much pottery as possible. The story is a morality tale with obvious messages, but presented in an unpredictable story.

We were next to see Azumi (Ryuhei Kitamura, 2003) around 9:30, a modern Japanese film in which "a female assassin is charged with bringing peace to war-torn Japan". The film ended up not being available, so Versus (Ryuhei Kitamura, 2000) was shown. I suspected I wouldn't like this film with zombies and underworld figures duking it out, in spite of its being supposedly comic and intentionally unrealistic - and I was right. I can't stomach such violence so left about half an hour into the film.