Ugetsu

“Ugetsu… Wow. Kenji Mizoguchi, one of the greatest Japanese filmmakers. Again, he dissects The Human Condition in a very, very clinical way. You watch him and you understand humanity.”

“Ugetsu. Oh, a Japanese ghost story.”

“[Translated] Next is Ugetsu by Kenji Mizoguchi. Martin Scorsese restored this, so there's a Blu-ray in Japan too, but Criterion has it here. I saw this as a child and it was scary. It's a bit of a ghost movie. It's in black and white, but it's a beautiful film, so I'd like you to see it.”

“This is my very favorite movie of all time. I show this to a lot of actors when I’m making films, because I haven’t made a film that isn’t heavily stealing from Ugetsu. There’s an opening shot of this film where he pans across the village. This idea of a film that kind of operates almost as one continuous piece of movement has heavily influenced my filmmaking. This is, in my opinion, a towering masterpiece, one of those films that you watch and you just think, 'How did he do that?'”