Around the World in 24 Frames 10.30.09: Late Spring
Posted by Len Archibald on 10.30.2009
It's Late Spring by Yasujirō Ozu. If you love movies, you will read this.
The Rant
No long rant on a particular topic this week; I've been taking care of my ill wife, and getting sick myself in the process…
- Hulk Hogan as a member of the TNA roster is…Interesting. I will reserve judgement, and I am excited over the prospect of Eric Bischoff coming in with him, but I think it kind of undermines the whole "we're going to focus on the future" thing the company has been building on.
- My anticipation for Precious grows more and more each day with every new review. If you told me at the beginning of the year that my most anticipated films of 2009 would be between one that shows a gratuitous amount Willem Dafoe's junk and another that stars Mo'Nique and Mariah F'n Carey, I would have done a combat roll into a belly flop and laughed all the way to the psych ward.
- Speaking of Ms. Carey (or Mrs. Cannon, whatever you choose), my age has fully shown as it became apparent to me that she's been around for TWENTY YEARS. Vision of Love, indeed.
- I have yet to see Paranormal Activity; blashpemous, I know. I have not had the time to check it out, between finding schools to further my craft of film making, writing my show, finishing my screenplay and scouting locations to shoot. I am excited over the prospect and happy that it has hit #1 at the box office. I am aware that in years time, it most likely will be slapped with the "overrated" label in the same manner that El Mariachi and The Blair Witch Project have been lately – but I have to admit a bias for the "small, no-budget" film. As an indie filmmaker myself, I understand how hard it is to scrape up every penny that goes into not just making a movie, but to get the word out through festivals, travel and marketing expenses. Any movie that can overcome "the system" and break through on sheer ambition, creativity and engineuity is alright with me.
- I am an absolute sucker and bonified addict of So You Think You Can Dance. I'm not ashamed to admit it, either. I like the show because it is different than all the other "reality competition" shows out there. The judges are actually knowledgeable and have credentials to back up their critiques (Ms. Abdul and Mrs. Osbourne, I'm looking at you) and you can tell they actually, genuinely CARE about not just the performers but the actual art of dance as well. Nigel Lythgohe is an excellent main judge, who is knowledgeable about every form of dance from the Waltz to Krump, and having dance heavyweights such as Mary Murphy and Adam Shenkman to aid him only helps add credibility to the show. Debbie Allen, Lil C, Wade Robson, Mia Michaels, Shane Sparks, Mandy Moore and Tyce D'Orio are all heavy hitters in the field of dance and their choreography and passion truly shines as they give their routines to these unknown beacons of talent and let them express what they love to do – move. No show, not American Idol, America's Got Talent, The Apprentice, The Amazing Race (which I do like), Hell's Kitchen, or Survivor does more for the contestants than SYTYCD. I also have a soft spot for host, Cat Deely. What a tasty dish she is.
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I love movies. They represent escapism, art, intellect and spirituality. Some are nothing more than popcorn flicks, designed to ease the burden of "real-life" for a couple of hours. Some bring important issues to the forefront that challenges how we perceive our surroundings. The most important thing for me – if one is a serious film-goer – is to constantly expand and discover new movies. This includes experiencing stories told outside of North America.
Yes, I know: "I don't like to read while I watch movies". Well, neither do I, but I won't use that to prevent me from finding a great story within the screen. It is important, as human beings to discover other cultures and expand our perceptions of those different from us and how they see the world. There are reasons that Bergman, Kurosawa, Fellini, Ozu and Truffaut are important in the movie world – They are just great at what they do.
I intend to highlight a new film every week that is considered "foreign-language"; now that definition is simple, yet broad and complex. For example, if you need subtitles to understand the events of the plot, I will discuss it. If it is a film from a primarily English-speaking nation, but is *NOT* in English (i.e. Leolo or Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner from Canada), I will discuss. If it is a film from outside the U.S. and it *is* in English, I will not discuss (sorry, Brits & Aussies) – for now. My goal is to shed light on some of these gems, and help quell the insatiable appetites for those who can't live without seeing a new movie. Enjoy!
晩春, Banshun: Late Spring (1949)
Japan
Dir: Yasujirō Ozu
Runtime: 108 min
Yasujirō Ozu's 1949 masterpiece, Late Spring has one of the absolute saddest denouements ever captured on camera. Shukichi (Chishu Ryu),plays a widowed father who sits by himself peeling an apple. The camera focuses on his quiet face, then the apple, as he peels the skin away with his pairing knife in one swipe. He lets the skin fall to the floor. Shukichi then slouches and lowers his head in despair. I have not spoiled the film, I just want to express Ozu's talent for displaying emotion through the simplest means.
Late Spring was the beginning of Ozu's foray into the style that he is universally known for. There are a few tracking shots – a few shots where there is actually -gasp- continuity within the editing, and shots where it is obvious the camera is higher than three feet off the ground, but the fundamentals are there: temporal ellipses, beautiful composition and a heartbreaking story of family and sacrifice.
Shukichi is a professor who has surrounded himself in his work. He has a loving relationship with his unmarried daughter, Noriko (Setsuko Hara) who is in her mid-20's. World War II has ended and Japan is surrounded with English-language signs and American memorabilia (there is a great shot of two cyclists riding past a diamond-shaped Coca-Cola sign in the foreground.)
Noriko's aunt, Masa (Haruko Sugimura) feels (or decides) that Noriko is getting up there in years and must marry before she is left alone in the world. Of course, she feels that everyone in the world should be married, even the widowed Shukichi. Noriko does not approve of the plans, neither does Shukichi – albeit in his own quieter way. The father and daughter has built an arrangement that works for them. Late Spring is the story of how outside forces work to dismantle that arrangement.
There is an undercurrent of anger, frustration, and resentment in Ozu's film. Noriko and Shukichi have been thrust into a situation neither wants to engage in. Noriko converses with her divorced high-school friend, Aya (Yumeji Tsukioka) in her room where they use baseball analogies to explain away their disgust for relationships. Ozu keeps his camera low to the ground – almost Orson Welles-Citizen Kane low and stays away from his characters. There is a distance Ozu keeps from them. He does this a lot in Late Spring.
Ozu's penchant for using space and dimension came into fruition with the filming of Late Spring. He used empty hallways, desolate beaches, and exaggerated distance between characters to express emotional circumstances. Ozu used routine to establish the comfort that the father and daughter were in before the story begins. We see a sequence where the father and daughter follow each other going upstairs and downstairs, coming and going out of rooms and corridors. When their relationship is threatened by Noriko's arranged marriage, she becomes a Japanese Stepford Wife, using domestic bliss as a mask of her unhappiness.
Setsuko Hara smiles a lot in the film – almost to where it is creepy. Noriko engages in a conversation with her father's friend, Onodera in a sake bar and he explains how he's remarried. Noriko expresses her disgust with him, calling him "repulsive" and "unclean", all with that same smile. She offers to pour his sake for him. She holds her smile. Onodera laughs and makes jokes of the situation, but it is obvious that Noriko is completely serious.
Originally, there is an arrangement for Noriko to be courted by Shukichi's assistant, Hattori. Noriko and Hattori take a bicycle ride to the beach and have dinner (in one of Ozu's great compositions, we see the two front tires of the bikes side-by-side, led by two clean prints in the sand.) It is implied that such an arrangement would be amicable. The two are of the same age, and they joke and smile with each other. Shukichi expresses the idea to his daughter, and she almost chokes on her dinner. We learn that Hattori is engaged. She learned of this off-screen.
A great scene takes place later, as Hattori invites Noriko to a concert. She refuses, not wanting to "make trouble". Noriko stands outside the hall of the auditorium, where inside Hattori sits – his hat on the empty seat intended for Noriko. She then walks home in the lonely dark. Was Hattori the victim of an arranged marriage himself? We never know. We do understand that the two liked each other and a relationship may have worked between them. I think he would have left his fiancée, but Noriko will not leave her father: this is the sacrifice she makes.
There have been essays and theories regarding the possibility of repressed incest in Late Spring between Noriko and Shukichi – and I understand where the interpretation for that theory could come into play, but I feel it is incorrect. First, Noriko has a disgust for sex. During the above mentioned conversation between Aya and Noriko, Aya whispers a rumor to her friend, dripping with sexual scandal. Noriko's face is one of repulsion. Her feelings about remarriage is another clue; Roger Ebert explains he feels that "once is enough". Noriko just truly believes that her father will be lost without her since her mother died.
After the possibility with Hattori falls apart, Masa takes it into her own hands to marry away Noriko. She proposes the Gary Cooper-lookalike (from the nose down, she says), Satake. In one of Ozu's characteristic techniques, he makes sure not to show Satake at all, but have his characters discuss him. Noriko thinks Satake looks like "the local electrician". She does not approve of the arrangement, and is very straightforward about it with her aunt in one scene where they keep their distance.
Knowing that her father is the barrier preventing Noriko from marrying, Masa devises a plan: She will introduce Shukichi to Mrs. Miwa, a younger widow. They will marry and someone will be able to take care of Shukichi, freeing Noriko to marry and move on with her life (even though neither truly wants to move on at all.)
Ozu then frames one of the single best sequences of anguish, deception, revelation and sadness he has ever done: during a Noh performance (a form of Japanese musical drama where characters are masked, playing both male and female roles), Noriko sits next to her father. Shukichi suddenly nods across the room. Mrs. Miwa, on the other end, smiles and nods back. Noriko notices and politely nods and smiles at the woman, who returns. Ozu cuts back and forth between the play and Noriko's face. She eyes her father who smiles obliviously at the play. She lowers her head in distress. With every second that passes, sadness melts on Noriko's face. It is one of the best acted scenes I have ever witnessed. Setsuko Hara put everything into this moment: it is easy to understand the depression she feels. The scene is Kubrick-esque before Kubrick, using space, non-existent dialogue and an unrelated (to the naked eye or untrained ear) event to display an underlying occurrence. The scene ends with Noriko escaping from her father. She feels he has betrayed their life.
One of the themes that Ozu studied time and again in his films was change. With the end of the second World War and the atomic bomb being dropped on his country, he was aware of the dramatic change that was going to ripple through his country. He was also aware of a group of Japanese citizens who were unwilling to move with the times and grasp onto the "old way" and traditions of his people and culture. Neither Noriko nor Shukichi were willing to change, but the world was changing around them. Ironically, Shukichi – the older of the two - decided to make the sacrifice so his daughter would be able to move on with her life.
The problem with that "sacrifice" for us, is that we know it is wrong. Noriko accepts her arrangement, but is not happy about it. "If it doesn't work," says Aya, "Just walk away." It is easy for her to say – she was not pressured to marry. It may be harder to get out than to get in. The collapse of the old civilization and the acceptance of the new one is Noriko's acceptance - first grudgingly, then with resigned good humor and finally with repressed sadness and compromise.
Compromise is a fairly Eastern philosophy – we speak of compromise as an idea in the West, but it is based under the idea of "if you can't beat them, join them." Ozu's definition of this idea is the acceptance of things beyond our control and not to fight, not to take life into your own hands, because in fact – it isn't. I mentioned before that Yasujirō Ozu and Akira Kurosawa were the yin and yang of Japanese films and their underlying philosophies – Ozu preached acceptance into society, while Kurosawa preached acceptance IN SPITE of society.
When a critic complains about the "slowness" of an Ozu film, I implore them to study his films in the same way we approach a novel. There are details thrown in the universe of Ozu's characters that give the feeling of a grand and epic scale without the grandness. In one scene, it looks as if Shukichi is about to read a newspaper, before he uses it to catch his toenail clippings. The secondary characters are each given a backstory and weight that make them feel like a part of the family of the main characters in Late Spring, even though they are anything but. It is this novelistic feel that gives Ozu films the realism and naturalistic tendencies that many of his fans adore. Ozu is never preachy or condescending in his tales, but observes the story in a way that engages his audience.
Cinematographer Yuharu Atsuta, collaborated with Ozu to help create the techniques that would give the master fame in film circles: low-angle shots; eyeline mismatches; the lack of interstitial fades and dissolves; as well as narrative devices such as ellipses—as when we see Noriko's devastation at her father's supposed remarriage and then transition to her seemingly positive and happy reaction to meeting ‘Gary Cooper'; and transition shots of unidentified locations to link themes and elided time intervals. Ozu took a page from Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer and great Dutch painters, where space, the tension built by spare movement, and the relative positioning of characters is all important. When Noriko tells her aunt that she will marry Satake, we only see a portion of her turned but beautifully dour face, indicating that she is not fully enthused with her decision.
Late Springwas the first collaboration of the trio of Ozu, Ryu, and Hara, and Hara became the Japanese equivalent of a Julia Roberts or Jennifer Aniston. She played a character named Noriko in three Ozu films – but were all different people. Ryu would play Hara's father, grandfather and brother, and was such a phenomenal actor, that he looked and sounded right for each role. His "hmm's" and grunts used to respond with different emotions reminded me of my grandfather, who would respond with a contemplative grunt from time to time – expressing everything from joy to sadness.
It is through these simple and economic means of action that Ozu was able to craft some of the world's greatest films. We're so used to "shaky-cam" and contrived situations where the characters fall victim to the limitations of the plot and fall into clichéd circumstances and Hollywood endings. Ozu was so bold to derive from these conventions, and would instead focus on the rolling of the ocean. It may "look" boring, but it was the most realistic expression of the human condition: life changes with the tide – you either roll with it, or get swept up in its weight.
Not so much a trailer as it is a tribute to Late Spring
{Film Passport Stamped]
Coming Attractions: Ozu...in COLOR!
Questions or comments? Email me at aa24frames@aol.com!!!
I enjoyed your column. Thanks for sharing this movie with us. May I suggest that you include, where possible, some idea of places we could find the movie you are writing about?
Posted By: Guest#5750 (Guest) on October 30, 2009 at 08:53 AM
