Sansho the Bailiff (1954)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Sansho the Bailiff (1954) – K. Mizoguchi

This is an epically sad film with many depressing turns of event, with terrible outcomes due to both human cruelty or frailty and to chance/fate/bad luck.  The film begins with Tamaki  (Kinuyo Tanaka) escorting her young children, Zushio (aged 13) and Anju (aged 8), across lonely terrain with only a maid to assist her.  In alternating flashbacks, we learn that she is headed to meet her husband, a regional governor who was “transferred” (i.e., exiled) to a distant province because he dared to stand up for the peasants in his jurisdiction.  Shockingly, she and her children are waylaid, betrayed, and sold into slavery.  Tamiki is forced into prostitution on faraway Sado island and her children are forced to work for Sansho the Bailiff in a slave labour camp.  Director Kenji Mizoguchi masterfully dispenses with the early exposition and depicts these brutal events rather unblinkingly.  From then on, we follow the children as they grow up in the slave camp until, 10 years later, they consider escaping.  The twists in the plot are surprising to say the least – but every time our hopes are raised, they are ultimately crushed by another depressing episode (“life is torture” is a lyric of the central song here).  That said, we might still take some solace that there are gentle and kind and compassionate people on this Earth even if the cruel and selfish and powerful are able to squash them.  As in his other masterworks (e.g., Ugetsu Monogatari, 1953), Mizoguchi uses longshots to set his characters in their milieu and isn’t afraid to use beautiful compositions (Japanese-style). The plot ultimately takes on a fabulistic shape as events move to their final resolution.  The lesson to learn would seem to be to endure despite suffering.