Mizoguchi reportedly wanted to have Tobei coldly and cynically advance his military career and forget about his suffering wife. But the studio baulked at the idea and talked Mizoguchi into having the two reconcile.
Since it was never made, we can have little idea how good Mizoguchi’s version would have been. But I have my doubts. There is that good scene in the brothel where, right before he finds his wife, Tobei is boasting about his skills and knowledge in warcraft. He namedrops many famous writers who he has never read, and he offers up as deep wisdom the shallowest ideas. Clearly this man would soon crash and burn in a culture of proudly professional warriors. Also, by having Tobei go back home with his wife, there is a more resonate parallel between the two couples, and particularly between the two men and what they have learned about themselves and their world.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
Tobei's turnaround was hard to believe, but because I assumed he would apply some sexual double-standard and forsake his wife at the brothel, I liked that the story didn't turn out that way.
But I appreciate it more for not leaving the wife's fate in the air rather than Tobei deserving a happy outcome, or that it was by any means "romantic." He was too bad a bargain for even a devoted wife.
DW, since you mention parallels, that also raises the question for me whether one man should deserve to reclaim his wife and the other lose his. Although I suppose the potter still had his child.
And, perhaps, that the slain wife stayed by his side in spirit.
If there were a version where Tobei forgot about his wife, it would be interesting to see him fail and how he would react to it.
I like the fact that he didn't fail, though (in this version) -- it would have been easier for him to go home after failure than it was for him to go home in spite of his success.
Or maybe not. I wonder how embarrassed he would have been to return home disgraced.
Tobei is so bumbling and goofy, though; I wonder whether he was that way from the beginning or whether they made him that way after they found out about the script revision. It's hard for me to imagine a more suitable fate for him than to be humbled and working the earth at his wife's side. And you can bet she is going to lip off and remind him periodicaly of his folly, in case the old Quixotic foolishness returns. And he also will have to see the potter daily and be reminded of that man's sorrow and of what could have been his own fate. Living with this humility seems like better poetic justice to me, not to mention morality, than, say, having him bumblefuck his way into some heroic death.
Cl, while you can certainly in a sense call this a morality tale, it is by no means a “just so” story. Mizoguchi has no interest in dishing out the fates we might find satsifing. Miyagi is the most noble of the four yet she is the one that dies a slow painful death from a gut wound not knowing if the child she has worked so hard to protect will even survive let alone see his father again. If you take the subjective as opposed to the supernatural read on the story, then Genjuro’s mental conversations with his wife at the end would be in part his effort to come to terms with the despair he realizes that his wife must have felt while dying.
Agreed that Tobei’s outcome certainly isn’t romantic. I think kc is right in that there is the most poetic justice in what happens to him.
True, dw. I might be romanticizing Miyagi's fate into "too good for this life" thinking again, aka the great Picnic debate.
Excellent points, Ben and kc.
Post a Comment