Japan, at the beginning of the 20th century. Okane (Ayako Wakao) is forced to be the mistress of an old rich man. When he drops dead and leaves her an important sum as heritage, she and her mother return to the village of her childhood. There, Wakao is despised and laughed at, and her behavior, an arrogant idleness, does not help. When her mother dies, she gets close the honorable soldier and pride of the village Seisaku (Takahiro Tamura). Against the will of the entire village, they both marry. But soon, Japan declares war against Russia and Sesiaku is drafted to go fight at the front. He leaves behind Okane and we witness her slow descent into madness.
With Seisaku's Wife, Masumura continues his exploration of love as disguised madness. We first meet Okane while she is a mistress in an arranged relationship. The old man who serves her as husband is obviously quiet fond of her. But his family does not approve of his choice and later, after the old man's death, ask Okane to cease all contact with them because they obviously see the relationship as a pipe dream of an old man, incapable of resisting the temptations of the flesh. With Seisaku, they both give in on their passion, although everyone around them ridicule them for their choice. They seal themselves off and develop a kind of sickly co-dependence, a passion for each other that borders on insanity from very early on. When Seisaku must leave the village and go to war, Okane is devastated, not only because she is left alone with people who scorn her, but because she is lonely and desperate and obsessed with Seisaku's love. After six months, he comes back due to an injury. And now comes the punishment part. Seisaku is so dedicated to his military career that he wants to go back to the battlefield right away. But Okane cannot accept that and stabs his eyes with a nail, rending him blind. She is then beaten senseless by a mob of villagers and sentenced to two years of prison. Seisaku on the other hand is now suspected to have done this voluntarily in order to avoid having to go back to war. The people call him a traitor and a coward, his honor is destroyed forever - and all due to his love to Okane.
But the film can also be read as an allegory of a society that has little use for behavior outside of the prescribed codes of conduct. When he first comes back to his village, Seisaku brings a big bell he bangs every morning in order to wake up the villagers and get them to work. From the beginning, Masumura paints the villagers as idle and downright mean gossip mongers, who don't understand a lot about the outside world but are unable to break out of their own routine. It takes Seisaku to shake them up and they are willing to follow because he is an honorable soldier and has authority. But once his love for Okane is made public, the villagers are unable to cope with that and immediately begin to question his integrity. They don't react anymore when he sounds the bell, they laugh at him, they don't take him seriously anymore. It is only when he is drafted to go back to combat, when his respect-inspiring status comes to the forefront and Okane has to step aside, that the villagers have reverence for him again. But when he is attacked by Okane, tying the end of his military career directly to the "whore", like the villagers call her repeatedly, they drop him again like a hot potato and suspend him. Authority figures have to behave in a certain way, the social fabric has to remain intact. Deviations are not met kindly, Masumura seems to tell us.
Either way, passion is a central element to Seisaku's Wife, and the characters all have their hearts on their sleeves. There is nothing subtle about their emotions, motivations and actions and they all behave in a very straight forward way, typical for any Masumura character. This emotional rawness makes for a fabulously melodramatic story that resists cheesiness and kitsch, proving that Masumura is a master of the genre. The beautifully shot exteriors are a fine setting, and Wakao turns in a very heartfelt performance. Two sequences near the end struck me as particularly successful: the scene where Okane's decision to permanently injure Seisaku is pitted against the festivities for his leave, and the scene when Seisaku imagines his wife in prison which Masumura paints as a vast and dauntingly foggy purgatory, where women roam about aimlessly, carrying massive chains after them.
A very good film.
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