Word: anju
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...exploitation of the weak to the separation of a family, the film achieves a simple unity of immense power. The children's motivation to escape and find their mother is at the same time a political motivation. When the boy Zushio decides to become Sansho's man, his sister Anju taxes him not only for his cruelty to his fellow-slaves but for rejecting the teachings of his father. Hearing his mother's voice calling in the forest convinces him to escape. Becoming governor of the province, he returns to free Sansho's slaves-and his sister. Discovering her death...
Resigning his governorship, he goes to find his mother. By a fishing hut on the shore of an island he hears the song she made up about him and Anju. Mizoguchi for the first time cranes up away from him and, keeping him in frame on one side of the house, reveals his blind mother on the hillside or the other side. Having set up that other-being-in-depth that is Zushio's goal, he cuts into close shot of her. Zushio approaches her, speaks to her; she refuses to believe it is he and, tearing herself away, hobbles...
Reunification, intergration of beings separated in depth, has finally been achieved. But she immediately breaks away and begins to grope around for Anju. He tells her, "We're all alone now, mother," as they sit in the same plane-in-depth. Mizoguchi cuts to a longer high-angle of the two isolated before the hut, and pans across as he cranes up and away from them. The camera holds on two silhouetted rock cliffs, symmetrical in the frame and flat on a single plane. Unified in depth, they are isolated by the surrounding white sky. Depth has been penetrated...