Film: Late Spring
Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Country: Japan
Released: September 1949
Runtime: 108 minutes
Genre: Drama
Studio: Shochiku
Influenced: Lindsay Anderson, Aki Kaurismäki, Claire Denis, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Hirokazu Koreeda
Ozu’s distinctive post-WWII style is a systematic rejection of Hollywood. His cinema is a unique mix of western classicism and Japanese Zen, starting with I Was Born, But... (1932) but attaining mastery by the time of Late Spring (1949). The pace is slow and the action muted, while scenes of modern Japan (people on trains and bikes) are interspersed with shots of temples, the wind rushing through the trees and the sea. Ozu presents us with a timeless Japan occasionally disrupted by an intrusive modern world. The plot is minimalist – a widowed father pretends to remarry to encourage his dutiful daughter to get married herself – and lots goes unsaid (we only hear about Noriko’s dead mother near the end of the film) and unseen (the marriage itself).
Relationships with fathers are a feature of many Ozu films; in I Was Born, But... we see the adoration of the sons turn to bemusement when their dad has to kowtow to his boss, and in Late Spring we meet 27-year old Noriko who worries about the effect her getting married might have on her father, Shukichi, believing she’s the best option to look after him. She cleans his desk, washes his shirts and collars, makes his food, even shaves him! Noriko's strong sense of loyalty to her father and her cheery disposition remind me so much of my own Nan, who also married just after WWII and showed the same sense of duty to her family and country. Ozu's films talk to us in a way that is so powerful, holding up a mirror in which we see our own family's reflection.
Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki said one of Ozu's great achievements was not having to use murder or violence to tell everything that's essential about human life. Late Spring features Zen gardens and a Noh performance, and also talk of Gary Cooper and western furniture, but the film is timeless in its portrayal of the tension between generations. Noriko is put under pressure to marry by her Dad and her aunt, and her reticence is also partly to do with her traditional values. She finds it indecent that her Dad’s friend has remarried. "Filthy", even! Somehow that’s not insulting to him but a source of amusement. She feels the same about her father possibly remarrying but comes to regret this position by the end of the film.
At the Noh performance, we see another drama play out. Noriko is hurt by the sense that her Dad might want to remarry and live a life without her, and it's only because he lies about intending to marry that Noriko will go on a date with the man suggested by her aunt. She decides to marry, and then father and daughter take a trip to Kyoto. Her father says how peaceful it is compared to all the dust and noise of Tokyo (any reference to the bombed out ruins of Tokyo was cut by the censors of the American Occupation). He says the last time he went to Kodai temple the bush clover was splendid. Sitting in the Zen garden, he’s full of mixed feelings and regrets, but as they’re packing up and he places Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra in his bag, he suddenly finds the force to speak with authority on time’s passing.
Late Spring's ending always makes me cry, the music and the scene of an empty nester facing a lonely future is so moving. Noriko says she doesn't want to leave her father for her husband, and that she's happy already. But her father replies that his life is coming to an end and that “you're about to start a new life and you must build it with your husband. I have no place in it. That's the cycle in the history of human life."
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