A heartwarming, amazing, impeccable film.
I still remember the shock I felt when I saw this. Such a visually radical, contemplative film full of so much emotion that it's bursting at the seams. The same atmospheric quietude that there's in all of his late films, contemplative but so telling and never silent, much like the performances, particularly that of Hara Setsuko. Then there's the humor: there are some of the most hilarious things in this film that I know of, including Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd and the Marx brothers.
The story appears simple, of course. That's the Ozu way — a simple skeleton that he uses to build on, visually, above all. The first shot at the beginning of the film, perhaps the third or fourth of the whole film, when we enter the house for the first time, is such a powerful transitory shot spatially that it gives me goosebumps: first a few introductory shots outdoors, the train station and so on, and then suddenly we enter the confined space of the house as if we were lying on our belly on the ground, looking at a room from the far end of the hallway. And then Noriko (Hara) enters.
The movie is full of such magical moments. The most famous scene of the film, that at the Noh theatre, is one, them leaving Kyoto for the last time is another, the final scene of the film being the logical emotional climax. It's marvelous, really: it's not over the top as if it tried either to go for realism or mechanically manipulate our emotions. On the contrary, I believe Ozu succeeds emotionally because his films open quietly and slowly. He doesn't push us into accepting anything, and he doesn't push his characters into doing anything, either. Marvelously crafted as if everything just appeared in front of our eyes without any rehearsal. It's a sign of a great filmmaker to let us into the film so deeply. The images stay.
I still remember the shock I felt when I saw this. Such a visually radical, contemplative film full of so much emotion that it's bursting at the seams. The same atmospheric quietude that there's in all of his late films, contemplative but so telling and never silent, much like the performances, particularly that of Hara Setsuko. Then there's the humor: there are some of the most hilarious things in this film that I know of, including Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd and the Marx brothers.
The story appears simple, of course. That's the Ozu way — a simple skeleton that he uses to build on, visually, above all. The first shot at the beginning of the film, perhaps the third or fourth of the whole film, when we enter the house for the first time, is such a powerful transitory shot spatially that it gives me goosebumps: first a few introductory shots outdoors, the train station and so on, and then suddenly we enter the confined space of the house as if we were lying on our belly on the ground, looking at a room from the far end of the hallway. And then Noriko (Hara) enters.
The movie is full of such magical moments. The most famous scene of the film, that at the Noh theatre, is one, them leaving Kyoto for the last time is another, the final scene of the film being the logical emotional climax. It's marvelous, really: it's not over the top as if it tried either to go for realism or mechanically manipulate our emotions. On the contrary, I believe Ozu succeeds emotionally because his films open quietly and slowly. He doesn't push us into accepting anything, and he doesn't push his characters into doing anything, either. Marvelously crafted as if everything just appeared in front of our eyes without any rehearsal. It's a sign of a great filmmaker to let us into the film so deeply. The images stay.