La muerte deslumbrada: ojos vacíos de luz anegados (en torno a «Mouchette» de Robert Bresson y «Sanshô dayû» de Kenji Mizoguchi)

Abstract

As our starting point we take two passages from María Zambrano which relate vision to the mors mystica: «death as dawn, a symbol of the acceptance of a sacrifice»; «[...] the death that one must die, according to the mystics and the poets, before the other death, in order to see [...]». In relation to mystics, Michel de Certeau refers to the «glare of death». It is a sacrifice of the gaze, death in the eyes, the absorption of sight in vision, a counter-image that constitutes the fullness of vision, and which here is exemplified with two sequences of self-immolation –a sign of that «accepted sacrifice»– in two significant films: Mouchette (1967), by Robert Bresson, and Sanshô dayû (1954), by Kenji Mizoguchi.