No Nonsense November #7

Coming to Ozu now feels like coming to an old friend. And seeing his actors and actresses, like seeing old friends. When I saw Chishu Ryu, I couldn't help it -- tears came. The final expression on Setsuko Hara's face is sublime. Quiet and tentative, it is such a fitting, triumphant look. It sends me all the way back to Chishu Ryu peeling his apple in Late Spring. I felt suddenly cast back. I remember how deeply I wept at that moment. How it has stuck with me for so long. The subtlest, quietest movement signalling the deepest, profoundest emotions. I think that is when I truly fell in love with Ozu. And so I unfold…

The laughter of the old men as they discuss how much fun they had arranging (ineptly) a marriage rings coldly as they sit, all camaraderie, without any awareness of the hurt they've caused. As a portrait of the cracks in traditional structures, this film is a fitting mirror image to Late Spring. The film captures the masculine presumptiveness that drives the men to get involved in relationships they don't need to be involved with, and the feminine frustrations of a life without a man in a patriarchal society. While I think Ozu's compassion is evident, I believe his focus is broader than merely the divide between men and women; he is exploring tradition (as always) and its complex affect on…

In this world, people love to complicate the simplest matters. Things may appear complicated, but who knows, the essence of life may be unexpectedly simple. That's what I aimed to express. - Yasujirō Ozu

Is there anything better than Ozu in color? It does more justice to the seasons specified by the title, at least those in English. And watching a film called Late Autumn only feels appropriate for this time of the year in N. America.

The mood of the film however isn't entirely austere, though the film slowly but surely veers in that direction. It revisits the premise of Late Spring, one of Ozu's best known films. But instead of a father being concerned about a marriage-age daughter,…

Conquering Ozu's seasons-related English international titles

A Setsuko Hara/Chishû Ryû world is a world I never want to leave. More than a reworking of the magnificent Late Spring (1949), Akibiyori, literally translated as "Clear Autumn Day", places the same central family dilemma but with roles reversed and a stronger emphasis on a post-war capitalist Japan and the social pressure exerted from a male white-collar operation, which might result in a criticism against this film under terms of vulgarity. Nevertheless, he reportedly wanted to showcase how people complicate the simplest of situations with their behaviors and schemes.

This film is labeled as a comedy, a perception I find interesting since all of Ozu's films have carried a consistent sense of humor…

☆"A man who marries a woman so beautiful is destined to die young."☆

The trek through the notable filmography of one of the greatest directors in history has reached its final trio, and those three films Yasujirō Ozu made in the last few years of his life should be every bit as lauded as his supposed peak era of 1949 to 1953. Thanks to TCM and Criterion, I've been able to record or purchase all these films to enjoy at my leisure. Now, with Late Autumn the acclaimed actress at the center of Ozu's famed "Noriko trilogy" -- the immaculate Setsuko Hara -- returns in a twist of the circle of life, this time as a mother persuading her daughter…

So this is another rare example of a director more or less remaking their own film, with this being Yasujiro Ozu 'retelling' Late Spring. It has different characters and takes the story in a different direction, but it's still the same idea, which is why they call it a retelling more than a remake. At first I was kind of confused why Yasujiro Ozu wanted to take another crack at his masterpiece, and even though I don't think it's as good as Late Spring, I can still understand why. He uses the same idea to convey two different themes across the films, with Late Spring being about generational miscommunication and tradition, and Late Autumn being about selfishness disguised as selflessness,…