Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu)

03/15/2010

Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu)

Last night Stephen and I watched 'Late Spring,' the 1949 film by Yasujiro Ozu. It was not our first Ozu, who made a zillion movies, many of them character studies about the family in pre- and post-war Japan, but it may have been our -- or at least my -- favorite. At the beginning of the movie, we meet a cheerful and expressively beautiful woman (she is 27) who lives with her elderly and widowed father. As the plot unfolds, she must confront pressure from all sides -- a busybody aunt, a presumptuous high-school friend and even her father, whom she loves and respects (and vice versa, but not at all in a creepy way) -- to get married. The problem is that she is (or believes she is, to the extent there is any difference) genuinely happy living with her father and fears that he wouldn't be able to take care of himself without her. To encourage her, he (colluding with his sister, the aunt), lets on falsely that he is going to get remarried, even though the news devastates his daughter (and to a certain extent, himself).

The movie perfectly captures the slow, unstoppable march of time, and how this -- perhaps even more than societal expectation and pressure of conformity, particularly in the realm of marriage -- works to ensure that no happiness is ever more than fleeting, and we can never expect to remain for very long with the ones we love most (and who perhaps understand us best).

Everyone in the movie is cast perfectly, from the startlingly beautiful daughter to the stoic and dignified father to the somewhat ugly if well-intentioned aunt.

Ozu punctuates the narrative with shots of the natural world, which seem to represent the idea that individuals are really insignificant in relation to the trees and the ocean and so much else that will outlive us. (This is a source of both pain and solace, obv.) Although Ozu was not 'openly gay,' he was not openly straight either, and in any case, his film resonates very strongly with a non-heterosexual 'voice' to the extent that it offers a damning criticism of marriage as an institution, which is made all the more poignant by the melancholy inherent to almost any passage of time.

The sadness of the story is redeemed by the exquisite beauty of its telling.

Posted at 07:42 PM in Expression, Reaction | Permalink

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Music: Death Culture at Sea and Saturnine

Listen or download songs and records from my indie-rock past with Saturnine here and Death Culture at Sea here.

Music Video: Remembrance of Things Past

Watch the rock opera Remembrance of Things Past written and performed by Saturnine and Frances Gibson, starring Bennett Madison and Sheila McClear.

Video: The Chaos Detective

The Chaos Detective is a series about a man searching for 'identity' as he completes assignments from a mysterious organization. Watch the first episode (five parts) on YouTube.

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03/15/2010