Japanuary 2023

You know Mikio Naruse has deep empathy for his characters because he lets them feel. He does not try to rescue them in conversations or in editing or in directing. His characters sit through a hard conversation and they must still exist in the specificity of their spaces — matters of interiority and exteriority developed in tandem.

In this Geisha house, the women who work it, and their madam who runs it, are afforded humanity before they are given conflict. Naruse can feel the pulse of the drama and gives such exacting, clear direction that his characters have extra-fine dimensionality even in this twilight night-shot black-and-white where the lighting is always dim, something about the characters shines a light in the mild grayness of their lives.

It is an understanding story but it also approaches the material without sentimentality. It is emotionally honest and thorough in its explorations, like a fine roadmap for how to place characters in a setting and imbue them each with sharply humanizing characteristics and a depth of feeling that glows off of the screen.