"half the tree's gone but it blossoms as if nothing has happened"

Ethan Watters discusses his book Crazy Like Us on The Daily Show:
Japan is 5 years behind the States in the use of drugs for mental health "do we want the rest of the world to think like us?...it's a billion dollar business in Japan...[we'll go] with the cultural trends that are there and sell a lot of drugs."

The Tokyo City Promotion 2010 couldn't have begged for better free publicity across the world as it's banner shouted proudly above The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre (venue for The Iraq Inquiry). One of their greatest movie exports Yasujiro Ozu is currently receiving a 2-month retrospective on the BFI Southbank. Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatari, 1953, B/W) lead last month (twice ranked by critics as among the 5 greatest films ever made in Sight and Sound): cult director Jim Jarmusch "couldn't imagine the world of cinema without [his] perfect, contemplative (and often funny) observations of human nature".
Tokyo Story: "Times have changed, we must face up to it."
"You deserve a better life," - "I'm fine, I'll never get old."
Complementing this in February is Late Autumn (Akibiyori, 1960, Colour) made 3 years before Ozu's death. As one of the older men says, "It's the people who tend to complicate life. Life itself is simple." At times in the film, the new bustle of modern city life is almost Jacques Tati-esque in its comic, choreographed background movement. Its insights notwithstanding, Late Autumn's lush romantic score does nod somewhat toward Hollywood presentation.

Back in 2007 the BFI held a Naruse retrospective with three new prints including his When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960) (Onna ga kaidan o agaru). And for years all Naruse's later was accused (Noel Burch) of being too close to the Hollywood norm. The studio head at Shochiku told him, "Naruse we don't need two Ozu's," so he moved to Toho for the next 30 years. Burch viewed Ozu as a modernist and non-Hollywood, contrary to other judgments of Ozu as establishment and nostalgic for old values. Though many others would argue that the neglected Naruse far more deserved new prints rather than Ozu, Tokyo Story would nonetheless reality benefit - Ozu's sound effects loose much of their power on an aging soundtrack. Hopefully they'll be one for the BFI DVD/Blu-ray release April 19 along with DVD for Late Spring (1949) and Early Summer (1951). But there are new prints in the season for Good Morning (Ohayo, 1959) and An Autumn Afternoon (Samma no Aji, 1962).

"His characters lack the hope and good humour of Ozu's in the face of disappointment," writes Alexander Jacoby in Senses of Cinema, "and, unlike Mizoguchi's protagonists, they are usually denied the luxury of death." Donald Richie in Cinema: a Critical Dictionary (1980): “He lacks that hope which is the highest wisdom.” “If they move even a little,” Naruse famously remarked of his characters, “they quickly hit the wall. From the youngest age, I have thought that the world we live in betrays us; this thought still remains with me.” One doesn't, of course, want to detract from any praise of Ozu. But it's fascinating to view all this work in historic cine context. In January 1960, the renewal of the Japanese-American Security Treaty set off violent clashes between students and police and in June 10,000 demonstrated prompting Oshima's radical film Night and Fog in Japan. As David Bordwell points out, "only the most dedicated reflection-theorist could find traces of this tumult in [Ozu's] Late Autumn...utterly insular, portraying a tranquil society that no longer existed."

Naruse's earliest extant work is Flunky, Work Hard (Koshiben gambare, also known as Little Man Do Your Best) from 1931, where he combined melodrama with slapstick, trying to meet the demands set by Shochiku's Kamata studio, who wanted a mix of laughter and tears. Akira Kurosawa called Naruse's style of melodrama, "like a great river with a calm surface and a raging current in its depths" and "a magnificent editor aware of the fact that you're caught in the flow of something...emotional tone," adds Phillip Lopate on an audio commentary disc in Eureka's must have box set of Repast (Meshi, 1951), Sound of the Mountain (Yama No Oto, 1954) and Flowing (Nagareru, 1956) - all great prints. It wasn't until a 1983 Locarno retrospective by Audie Bock and a subsequent Toronto Cinemateque and Film Forum, New York retrospective that Naruse became known (included in Eureka's booklet is Bock's essay A Gesture and a Pose first published in Artforum 2005).
Bock: "If Ozu can imbue a film with transcendence by holding a shot of a vase in a corner of a dark room while the soft murmur of a father's snoring continues on the soundtrack Late Spring), Naruse will use a cutaway to an inanimate object for a completely different purpose." Lopate: "One of the charms of Naruse's art is its earned pessimism. It takes for granted that life is unhappy: therefore, we can relax in the possession of sadness, acquiesce from the start to a fated disenchantment."

Naruse made shomin-geki (working-class drama or 'home films' about the lower, middle or salaried classes) with female protagonists - "his forlorn flavour of existence can become addictive" Lopate writes, while James Quandt in The Films of Japanese Master Mikio Naruse notes "Naruse's lucidity (as opposed to pessimism, a distinction Bresson often made about his own work...Naruse's films could never be mistaken, as Ozu's often are, as transcendental." Quandt also compares Naruse to French director Maurice Pialat. "A director of the here and now," says Lopate comparing him to American John Cassavetes, with a "devotion to getting the exact feel of domestic space [his characters] forced to behave well and compelled to express their discontent with that arrangement." The father muses to his daughter in the opening of The Sound of the Mountain: "whenever I see a sunflower, I think of a man's head. I wonder of the inside of a man's head could be as beautiful as a flower. Wouldn't it be great if you could send your brains off to be cleansed? You could remove your head take it down to the hospital and say, 'wash this for me' like at the laundry!"

Hirokazu Kore-eda doesn't let the Japanese side down with his Yokahama family re-union Still Walking (Aruitemo aruitemo) released before Christmas and having just finished its BFI run to coincide with Ozu. Well worth catching the DVD of this. The BFI also has a concurrent season of films influenced by Ozu.
Soda Pictures' has the poignant Korean release Treeless Mountain with a 7 and 6-year-old left in the care of their alcoholic aunt. Another DVD to look forward to.

Director Yojiro Takita's Departures (released last June in New York by Regent Releasing and in the UK late last year) beat Waltz With Bashir and The Class to win the 2009 Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar. Best known for making soft-core porn, the film divided many critics but you'll be able to decide for yourself soon on DVD. Daigo (Masahiro Motoki-former pop idol 'Mokkun') is a cellist in a waning Tokyo classical orchestra that's victim of the credit crunch. With his wife, they decide to move back up north of and live in his childhood home - unhappily but thankfully with his mother now deceased. Seeking work he spies an ad for "departures" which in fact turns out to be "encoffinment," the preparation of corpses before their cremation, nokanshi . Such a job is frowned upon as Japan’s burakumin (outcast) class. It's a strange, somewhat very intentionally melodramatic film about death and its empowerment through strengthening the soul. Some critics felt the comedy and pathos just too strained. But Yojiro Takita seemed to know always exactly what tone he was creating. John Williams' (unreleased theatrically in the UK) Firefly Dreams was released on DVD sometime ago (reviewed here {8 paras in}) and again worth a look.

Clive Owen's Ozzie (Brit ex-pat) sports journo in The Boys are Back may have landed in hot-water had he pretended to be report from his sofa (not from the broadcast booth) Andy Murray's defeat in the Australian Open final in Melbourne yesterday against Roger Federer. (We learnt from BBC coverage that Murray began from humble beginnings in Dunblane, Scotland pillow fighting as a kid to commanding the world stage. The Boys are Back director Scott Hicks gave us the breakout Oz film Shine (1996) and while this adapted memoir from Simon Carr is by turns touching, amusing, beautiful to look at, and with fine acting (as always from Owen) it never really takes flight into anything surprising or disturbing.

Naruse's battling wife in Repast almost cries all the time while always smiling. And at one point in the film she says quite simply, "I'm so tired of this". We all say this. Often. But Naruse's skill and his actress manage to send shockwaves through us. The afore mentioned critics view Naruse as the most materialist of all directors with many at the "end of their rope in terms of their finances". As in Chekhov and Mike Leigh they continue smiling and hoping for a better life.

[MUCHO ADDITION-Fri Feb 5)

....there are a few more words to inhabit this space...just their removal van went a bit kaputt ;)
and unlike The Three Sisters, some of us do make it to Moscow and beyond. Certitude versus adventure.

.it is what it is.


Businessmen in FOOD, INC (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)
Distributed by Dogwoof in the UK