✯✯✯✯✯

The first moment in which I saw Kenji Mizoguchi’s The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums, the impact was beyond overwhelming to that point my writing had been stinted from going even further than what I had wished when I wanted to talk about what it had left upon me. The only thing I could ever pick out, however, was that it had broken my heart the way no other Mizoguchi film has done so, and I knew from first glance that only he could have handled such a story so masterfully. Yet this was unlike anything that I have seen from Mizoguchi, as the moment in which it had ended, I found myself in a wrecked state. I was wrecked because I was witnessing pain. Pain which I had also felt upon myself, it was all the more difficult to describe. Mizoguchi’s masterpiece, but also one for all of humanity. Continue reading →