This movie is harrowing to watch as a woman myself. On one hand, I’m grateful to have seen a movie narrated by a female protagonist. On the other, I guess I expected too much when I said I thought it would be a joyful story. The Life of Oharu is structured like an epic that chronicles the tumultuous journey of a noblewoman. In a way, Oharu appears less like a singular character but instead embodies the combined experiences of women living in postwar Japan. Oharu’s life is a compact portrayal of the gender and social inequalities that women had to endure under Japan’s rigorously maintained status quo. This theory of mine is propelled by the fact that Oharu had embraced so many different roles in this movie. It just seems humanly impossible for someone to have actually gone through such drastic change in a short time. Nevertheless, I think this film ultimately strives to depict the gross mistreatment Japanese women were subjected to and how it only gets worse the lower their social status. It just seems like there’s no space for them to breathe at all. Their fates have been sealed the moment they were born a woman. Their bodies don’t belong to them. They can’t linger at a place unless they are given permission to by a patriarch. They are forbidden to love whoever they want. They are put on display and objectified blatantly by men. I felt sick when I saw Oharu crying about almost getting raped, and the nun decided to banish her instead of helping her. It’s also extremely unsettling that Lord Matsudaira can just list off a bunch of ideal physical traits he wants to see in his concubine like he’s doing grocery shopping. His assistant appraised all the women sitting in rows like they were commodities that he could just “buy” (which he horrifyingly did).
Since we are watching this film in 2021, it’s very easy for us to forget that it actually belongs to the jidageki genre. Mizoguchi had specifically hired a team of professionals to design props that would fit the period this film was set in. I think they did a fantastic job rendering the settings to fit the 17th-century milieu. For once, the camera isn’t static like it was in the Kurosawa and Ozu films we’ve seen these past few weeks. Mizoguchi uses plenty of long shots in the film. I honestly don’t recall a scene where I could see a character’s face clearly. I believe this is one of Mizoguchi’s ways of directing the audience’s attention away from deciphering the characters’ emotions and demanding more focus on the oppressing environment that has been built around Oharu - one that eerily resembles the society they were currently living in. One doesn’t really need to see a close-up of Oharu’s face to know how she feels about the things she had been put through. Another good use of wide shots is to allow the audience to contextualize the subjects with their foreground and background elements. Another interesting thing I notice is that, compared to Ozu who uses shot/reverse shot liberally, Mizoguchi retains the use of long shots even when the characters are having conversations with one another. The wide shot will contain all the characters relevant to the ongoing chatter without once cutting to a close-up. Additionally, I also notice the director’s use of long takes in the film. One example I can think of right now is Oharu’s family’s walk to the bridge accompanied by their friends and relatives. This continuous shot lasts about a minute, and the camera pans twice within that time. Joan Mellen writes, “Gender loyalty exists only when it is accompanied by class sympathy.” I think it’s a fitting description for another thing Mizoguchi seeks to depict in his film: how women treat their own kind. Oharu is the only one who is seen to help the beggar singing about her pitiful fate and how painful the fleeting world is. She has sympathy for her because she’d almost been in her place before. In contrast, the merchant’s wife gets jealous of Oharu and tries to cut her hair off to impair her beauty, fully convinced that hair loss equates to the loss of admiration from her husband.
Last but not least, I think Mizoguchi incorporated a story about doomed love here to criticize the rigid and centuries-old feudal order. Inflamed and sustained by patriarchy, social hierarchies were enforced to the point where someone could risk execution for getting involved with people from a different class. I don’t know if Oharu getting exiled is an exaggeration, but either way, I think Mizoguchi has done a remarkable job getting his point across: even when the story is set against the backdrop of technological and artistic advancement, women are still suffering relentlessly. If this film makes you uncomfortable, then it’s doing what it’s exactly made to do. The Life of Oharu portrays the hardships a woman has to endure amid the vicissitudes of life, brought forth by a society obsessed with rank and power. It makes us question a woman’s position in society then and now, and if things have really changed as much as we have hoped.