David Vining's Blog, page 11

Floating Weeds

A nearly shot for shot remake of Ozu’s own silent masterpiece  A Story of Floating Weeds, Floating Weeds has all of the original’s positive qualities while finding space to deepen the action ever so slightly using the tools and conventions of the sound era. It takes a great foundation, adapts it to a new medium, and makes it even better by using those tools of the new medium.

So, it’s the same story of an acting troupe coming to a small Japanese town, staying there for a year, and then fa...

Good Morning

This might be Ozu’s smallest film (though it’s an ensemble film, so the cast is actually fairly large). Its topics are the most down to earth and almost mundane, and yet through the observation of characters going through small things, Ozu finds great meaning and emotional impact. It’s an endearing little comedy, full of fart jokes and human moments as people navigate small issues while revealing larger truths.

Being an ensemble, there’s no real central actor to take up the mantle of prot...

Equinox Flower

Ozu leaves behind the overt melodrama of his previous two films and returns to shomin-geki films more focused on grounded family issues. Watching these in order back to back creates a certain unfair sense of whiplash after the larger dramatics which then get followed by the quiet, small issues of Equinox Flower: a father’s approval of a daughter’s marriage. Ozu’s ability to manage these small emotions in his accomplished way make it work remarkably well by the end, and I had been wanting Ozu...

Tokyo Twilight

Another step towards melodrama from Ozu, Tokyo Twilight has all of the big sweeping pieces but none of the emotional swings, the director keeping to his restrained style even as he includes more expressive lighting and shadows. The actors are keeping things in check, and it’s Ozu’s secret sauce to making this stuff still work. Filling the film with side-characters that don’t really have their own stories but do help fill out the edge of the frame both practically in helping to make the world...

Early Spring

The Japanese film industry was changing, and Ozu’s comfort zone of the family drama was falling out of favor. So, he was convinced to make something more facially melodramatic. Now, I remember my more muted (but still somewhat positive) reaction to the last time he did this sort of thing, lending himself out to Shintoho for The Munekata Sisters, and I was a bit worried about Early Spring. And yet, this is Ozu more adeptly transitioning to the more melodramatic space. Perhaps it’s because thi...

Tokyo Story

Yasujiro Ozu’s most famous film, Tokyo Story is an exemplar of his style and appeal. A quiet, small story of family, changing times, and lost opportunity, the movie is a subtle affair that creates characters to explore these themes with intelligence and a deep well of emotion that never comes close to melodrama. It’s a simply great film that requires patience and attention but rewards the viewer greatly upon that investment.

Shukichi (Chishu Ryu) and Tomi (Chieko Higashiyama) are the elde...

The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice

Essentially the same movie as What Did The Lady Forget?, The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice is the story of a long-married couple as seen through the ideas of a young woman. It’s not quite the same thing, the emphasis here falling more on the couple than the ideas of the young woman, and I think that’s why I like this more than the earlier take on the similar idea. The emotional catharsis seemingly lied with the young woman in the earlier film, but here it rests fully on the couple, allowing ...

Early Summer

Returning to Shochiku after a one film deal with Shintoho, Ozu also returns to his more restrained and original storytelling, as well as his new leading lady, with Early Summer. It’s a further example of Ozu being master of what he wants to do: telling small, domestic stories with large implications, quiet emotions, and a steady pace that allows the audience to take in all of the fine details and implications of small movements with large impacts. No one mess with Ozu’s process again, please...

The Munekata Sisters

Ozu is always dancing on this line of melodrama, and he very typically rests on one side, the reserved and constrained side of things. However, with The Munekata Sisters steps fully on the other side of the line into full melodrama. I can imagine another form of this film more in line with Ozu’s typical sensibilities that starts about 80% of the way through it as it currently is, and then spends 100-minutes to retell the current form’s final 20 minutes. I think I might have liked that versio...

Late Spring

Most famous as Ozu’s first collaboration with Setsuko Hara, a collaboration that they would continue for more than a decade and include most of Ozu’s most famous films, Late Spring is another example of Ozu’s technical mastery in service to a quiet, intimate, familial story of change, unwelcomed, necessary, but inevitable change. I don’t quite get the emotional gut punch of A Hen in the Wind, but the small story is still affecting and emotionally involving nonetheless.

Noriko (Hara) lives...