The Life of Oharu

1952 Shintoho
Directed by: Kenji Mizoguchi; Written by: Saikaku Ihara (novel), Kenji Mizoguchi, and Yoshikata Yoda
Starring: Kinuyo Tanaka, Tsukie Matsuura, Ichirō Sugai, Toshiro Mifune, and Takashi Shimura
MPAA: NR; Running Time: 148 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 8/10

When a completely swaggerless Toshiro Mifune is beheaded in the first 20 minutes of Kenji Mizoguchi's The Life of Oharu, it is apparent this will not be a film for heroes. Better for Mifune's character, Katsunosuke.
Katsunosuke's lover, the higher class Oharu, is doomed to a life of misery. The couple's romance is given little time to shine. They get together, they're found out, Katsunosuke is sentenced to death, and Oharu (in a heartbreaking performance by Kinuyo Tanaka) and her family have their status stripped and are sent to exile.
Oharu and her mother try to make the best of things, but just as they're settling into their new life, Oharu's father, Shinzaemon, decides to jump on an opportunity to send Oharu to the lord of the land to be the lord's concubine. Shinzaemon hopes Oharu will be his golden goose. Ideally, she'll bear a son for the lord, and the son's great inheritance will be sent back to its his grandparents. Oharu does bear the lord's son, but then she's sent home with only a pittance. Things get worse from there.
As a director, Kenji Mizoguchi is both known for technical excellence, and a great sympathy toward women, birthed by witnessing his own sister sold into prostitution by his father. Nearly every man in The Life of Oharu uses the titular character to their own ends, even the humble Katsunosuke, who convinces Oharu that their love is worth any punishment they may receive. Oharu herself would have been fine with an unrequited relationship--after all, she won't be the one to receive a quick and noble death. When Oharu finally does meet a man who respects her, he is not long for this world. With the way Oharu is commodified, her life doesn't have much room for bad luck.
I had a hard time watching The Life of Oharu, which at times feels close to misery porn. Oharu's life is one long act of suffering after another. No matter what she does, she has little agency. Mizoguchi's closing sequence seems to equate Oharu to the Buddha, though that's a cultural wall my Western eyes can't quite see over.
What prohibits the film from crossing the misery porn line is both Mizoguchi's great empathy, and the fact that his lens never objectifies Oharu. While he often frames her from above to symbolizes how powerless she is in any given situation, he never allows those holding power over her to tell her story.
In one of the film's most brutal scenes, a man realizes he has Oharu alone, and can do with her what he wishes. Instead of showing the following rape in any kind of a lurid sense, Mizoguchi follows the man outside, where he gives money to the boy standing watch, and tells him to go buy himself some sweets. There's no doubt about what the man's intent is, but by only showing this and not the actual act, and by Mizoguchi's blocking, it's the offender the camera debases, and not the victim. The film belongs to Oharu.

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