The End of Summer

Last night I saw, Ozu’s second last film, The End of Summer - a masterpiece of the order of Tokyo Story. I am not so taken away by a film in recent times, as this. It has all of Ozu's signature style (narrative eclipses [I am yet to see a death scene in an Ozu film], cyclic sequences [a farewell party sequence go like this - a shot outside the party inn with voice of people singing farewell song, inside the inn - people toasting, exchanging wishes, and finally a shot of outside inn with voice of people singing the same farewell song. There are innumerous examples like this], frame within frame within frame low-angle shots] and themes [marriage, inevitable change, death and family] and yet it is so fresh a work that one feels like seeing Ozu reborn. It looks awkward to say but this film is a surreal experience, not conventional surrealism but surrealism of conventions. What I mean to say - this film looks as a surreal experience in the way people behave, there is a veneer - the joy of seeing old man behaving like a child (the hide and seek between grandfather and grandson looks as if the old man is fooling his age and the death, The dialogue - "I m ready...Are you ready" - also echo this play of nearing death), a young girl preparing for a date when a person lie dead nearby and just before going out standing there in a one-minute mourning, the way a female relative first tries to joke about the old man and when remembers his joy for life, abruptly starts to cry at the funeral (a truly moving scene albeit the awkwardness), the shot of people in black at the funeral put next to black crows who come near the dead, the joyous moments of old man look more of the remembered past than present, the last words of the old man - "Is it this, Is it Really this !", everything makes some strange mixture of surrealism and social conventions, aided by a haunting musical score. Old man’s daughter in law , one of the most honest members of the family, later in film says something very insightful about the films and life both - she says " Father was so irresponsible, but some how he kept it all together". It is the old man who keeps the film together by his childlike charm and tantrums, and when he is gone what is left is a plain life. I also feel more comfortable with Ozu's pessimism now. It’s not a try-hard-feel-bad pessimism, and is therefore deeper down and stays with you. To put it pictorially, it is a canvass on which life, relations, human connections and interactions is drawn in an Ozu's film. Once they are gone, the bright fog (or light, like Ozu's films which are filled with sunlight) of pessimism and nothingness is left. It is nothing to be feared or run away from, it will be there always. Hence it resolves the paradox to see a film filled with life eventually pointing to its temporality and nothingness. Also, this film validates why Ozu made similar type of family stories over the years. To me, it looks as an exercise to understand how people behave in similar situations in different times. Women and men in Ozu's film might have gone wiser or more modern but are still trapped. They are trapped in "the cycle of life", as a paddy farmer says to his wife, seeing the smoke rise from the cremation chimney.

Mesmerized.

I saw Ozu's heartrending Tokyo Story for the fifth time few days back. Again, I am speechless, again I am mesmerized. Writing about this film will not do any good, any analysis is superfluous, any interpretation will not suffice. So, I will just put a dialogue and a still (Noriko's) from the film. Try to find it and do see it at least once in your lifetime. I can't recommend it more.

Kyoko: Isn't life disappointing?
Noriko: [smiles] Yes, it is.

Tokyo Story quietly stands like an oldman remembering a simple story of generations, family and people, but it is stunningly contemporary. Heart ruptures silently after watching this masterpiece, cinema seldom satisfies you this much, simple images don't resonate better than this.

Yasujiro Ozu

I entered the world of Ozu this week. His world is like my world and your world, ordinary people, daily-life, same suffering and same everyday sadness. Like Fassbinder, Ozu is blamed many a times for repeating the themes and even the same stories. He actually made a remake of his own film since he liked the idea too much. Ozu is also blamed to be a minimalist, which is again very disturbing as Ozu's art is very detailed and very complicated if anyone has the right senses. In a very prolific career, Ozu made some 54 films (only 36 of them exist today), out of them lots were in silent era and he was torchbearer of silent cinema till late 40s and all this love for images and the composition of rich frames shows in his talkies too.


Although the pet theme of Ozu's Cinema is about family life, he himself never got married. Also Ozu is not much interested in plot details, most of plot details are not shown directly but through some references, most of the screen time is reserved for 'greater good'. The most celebrated masterpiece of Ozu's career is a movie called Tokyo Story which invariably figures in top 10 lists of critics across the globe. Tokyo story is the only Ozu Movie I have seen, and which had a great impact on me and all the recognition received by this movie is deserved to the last decimal place. I will write about this movie in detail later but for now I will continue about Ozu and some of the observations that I gained by watching the masterpiece.

The popularity of Ozu's work in Japan is well known; it came to the wider world audience as late as 70s. Other notion about Ozu's work was that they are too Japanese, that is as baseless as saying Bergman's work is only for philosophers as it is too philosophical. Any work of art ought to have the smell of region where it comes from, isn't Ray's work talk about Bengali sensibilities. It is more beautiful and soulful that way. One more thing that make Ozu's work very dear and approachable are the themes they deal with, if you are living you are sure to have experienced them, and Ozu handles these seemingly simple situations and plots with soft yet incisive acumen, never going melodramatic but always baring the right emotion and hitting the most fragile nerve with remarkable insight to it. And then there is camera-work, which is done with very small tripods to give a low angle and full view of the scene as characters move in haze-maze of Japanese houses, the compositions are like frame into frame into frame, very theatrical. The images of contrasts show the ever widening generation gaps, the visual of ordinary countryside juxtaposed with fuming chimneys of Tokyo. But all this cannot work if there is nothing that touch the heart in a true sense, not that we are looking for any emotional extravaganza or any commandments on morality, or for the matter, any commentary on society. Ozu's cinema is a cinema of change and the people and how people cope with it and can they ever cope up with this race.

Here Ozu seems like a soft pessimist, not complaining, not rationalizing, not moralizing and not even creating any bias or fake-sympathy. Ozu just looks at people sufferings in this world and shows it with no pretensions, with aloofness, with a sense of certainty those things and people change and how nothing is as pretty as it seems. With all the loneliness, goodness and evil in society, we are sure to fall on every side of it, its inevitable, we will simply succumb to it. Although Ozu's work revolves around families and social rules and the common man trapped in them, they make a big statement against them, all this commonsense pragmatism and worldly-wise wisdom is ridiculed in the simplest of ways. The art of Ozu is smooth, deeply pensive, devastatingly incisive and over all universally true. Ozu is must-dope for any cinephile. Go enter the world of Ozu and meet yourself.