"Peter Sellers. I think it might be the perfect film. I saw it in college. I just was blown away. This is not a unique argument unto myself, but the key thing of that film is it’s so wonderful to sit and allow this story to unfold and wash over you. The effect it had on me then is that this final scene, I was, like, weeping when this last moment happened. It’s not even a conclusion to anything. It’s not “the hero makes it home from war” or “the orphan gets adopted.” It’s not this big conclusion to an arc. Yet it is. It is like this unbelievable moment of beauty and grace, and the fact that the film never nods to that entirely until this final moment, to have such control over your medium to do that sort of thing, is remarkable in itself, I think. To see Sellers — he is so magnificent — to see him in a role like this, instead of Clouseau or The Party or something like that, that’s wonderful. But still a very large character. It’s just wonderful."

"Mizoguchi is one of the greatest masters who ever worked in the medium of film; he’s right up there with Renoir and Murnau and Ford, and after the war he made three pictures—The Life of Oharu, Ugetsu, and Sansho the Bailiff—that stand at the summit of cinema. All of his artistry is channeled into the most extraordinary simplicity. You’re face-to-face with something mysterious, tragically inevitable, and then, in the end, peacefully removed. I love all three of these pictures and many other Mizoguchi films as well (including Princess Yang Kwei-fei, The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums, and Miss Oyu, to name only a few), but Ugetsu has the most powerful effect on me. There are moments in the picture, famous ones, that I’ve seen again and again and that always take my breath away: the boat slowly materializing from out of the mist and coming toward us . . . Genjuro collapsing on the grass in ecstasy and being smothered by Lady Wakasa . . . the final crane up from the son making an offering at his mother’s grave to the fields beyond. Just to think of these moments now fills me with awe and wonder."