CINEOS Premiere

Ugetsu

In a country torn by war, two peasants chase profit and glory and lose everything that mattered — a ghost story about greed told with unearthly beauty.

Mizoguchi's camera glides so beautifully that you watch in a state of aesthetic absorption, with dread pooling quietly beneath the fog and candlelight. The grief here isn't shock but accumulation — ordinary human weakness ruining the people who least deserved it — and the images lodge in memory like still photographs. Even the film's tenderness is edged with solitude, because the living and the dead can never truly share a room.

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FAQ

Is it a ghost story?

Yes and no. There are ghosts, but they're the vehicle — the real subject is human greed and longing, and what men throw away chasing wealth and desire.

Is it hard to follow?

Not at all. It tracks two men and their families through wartime, and the supernatural slips in so gently you accept it before you question it.