The Love Suicides of Amijima: How Surrealism Creates Satire in the Film Adaptation Puja Harikumar College

The Love Suicides at Amijima is a play that was meant to serve as a social commentary rather than portray an epic romance. However, the 1969 film adaptation appears to take a different approach to the story. Based on the two opening scenes that don’t appear in the play, involving unrealistic dialogue, and the context of the story within the movie’s universe, the director of this movie apparently intended to portray the lover’s romance as a satire.

The opening scene of the movie strips the play of it’s initial purpose to critique class barriers that existed during Monzaemon’s time. The film opens up on a modern-day setting, with a movie director preparing to tell the story through puppet theatre. Although that was the original medium used to tell the tale, by turning it into a story being told within a modern universe, it alienates the audience from the core themes. The reason for this is that the audience gets the impression that they are watching a story that is being told solely for the sake of entertainment, rather than a thought-provoking commentary on social practices. Furthermore, unlike the Revengers Tragedy movie, the historical setting of the Tokugawa period remains the same for this one. While staying true to the...