Ozu is such a pleasure, a quiet one, meditative.
The story here is about lives, whether they are arranged and what agency we have in arranging them. Many viewers will suppose that the topic was chosen because of some desire to make a comment about Japanese society.
No, its because the filmmaker had turned introspective in his later years. His films are characterized by the way the shots are composed. Each one is a matter of absolute perfection. The perfection is so complete, you have to stop and study. You have to rerun certain scenes to see how amazingly the components arrange. He is the ultimate classical Japanese composer. Sometimes you see that the sets must have been especially built for one setup. Pure geometries and symmetries dominate. The camera is always static.
The effect is that what you see has nature. Its natural, human. It flows in much the same languid, undramatic way that life does around us. But what we see is that flow in a highly composed context. Every element in that context naturally occurs but seems to have found its own harmony to please the eye of the viewer. Its the cinematic Japanese garden.
There's a subtle thing here. Ordered nature presented so that the human composition seems so in tune with nature that we love it. But it is arranged. It is pure and unnatural too, sort of abstractly sublime.
This viewer is a Westerner who works with Japanese concepts of ideal, natural harmony. Watching this makes me cry with a pleasure that avoids being joy.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
