Punts de reflexió sobre Banshun / Primavera tardana, de Yasujiro Ozu (per a la sessió del dimarts 4 d'octubre)

Yasujiro Ozu - Donald Richie

Yasujiro Ozu began seeing films while still young. He used to cut classes in order to go to the theatre near his primary school. Kogo Noda remembers him saying: 'If it hadn't been for that theatre, I might not have become a movie director'. There he saw Lillian Gish and Pearl White and later the pictures of Rex Ingram and King Vidor. Like many of the schoolboys of his time, he saw few Japanese films. Instead, he saw all the new American pictures that he could.

He failed to enter the prestigious Kobe Higher Commercial School because, he used to say, when the examination was being given he was watching The Prisoner of Zenda. Though later to be known as the most Japanese of Japanese directors, a part of this Japanese-ness is certainly the strong American influence on his work. Another is the amount of covert biography in his pictures. The role of his father in his pictures-despised, later idolised-some critics have found in Ozu's own parental attitude. Certainly he, unlike a number of his characters, never married and thus never experienced the necessity of leaving a parent alone. He lived with his mother until her death-and he himself died one year later. Perhaps one of his most salient characteristics might also be called Japanese-the ability to take from various sources, to mix genres, and then to so purify the result that it becomes of a personal strength that transcends boundaries. Or perhaps this is the way that all of the most personal artists work.

Whatever-Ozu now belongs to the world. At his request, his tombstone bears the single character mu-an aesthetic term, a philosophical expression, one that is usually translated as 'nothingness' but that suggests the nothing that in Buddhism is everything.

A modest extravagance: Four looks at Ozu - David Bordwell

The film comes to us calmly, not trying to overpower us or even wheedle us: just a simple story that seems to tell itself. First there is the daily routine of people arising, going to work or school, greeting acquaintances, labouring at their desks, meeting friends at a bar or teahouse or coffeehouse. Gradually, as one character mentions or meets another, we are introduced to them, and then we discover another network of people, also linked through everyday action and little courtesies. This movie, it seems, could slip-slide from group to group forever, eventually taking in the population of Japan.

Slowly, a plot coalesces. Someone is in love; someone is unhappy; someone must pass an exam; someone must get married to oblige a parent. Now everything that we have seen starts to crystallise into a drama. But the narrative flow is so unpredictable, even diffuse, that we can scarcely imagine what the climax could be. Sometimes the action is just put on hold, and an idyll shows a character recalling days of prior happiness, or imagining recalling today as a moment of consummate peace. Suddenly, a crisis descends. Someone we have come to care about falls ill, or decides not to marry, or decides to marry someone else, or makes a serious mistake. And soon we are truly overpowered, with a climax that seems radically contingent. Why this? Why now? The characters may ask along with us, but they resign themselves to things. The epilogue is like a farewell. These people who have come to matter to us drift away to an uncertain future.

In all, here is a story that achieves its power through simplicity. But that's at a first glance. Take a second look, and you see a subtle architecture. The distantly connected characters actually form a table of contrasts. For every wilful father, a tolerant one; for every cheerful daughter, a morose one; for each flirtatious boss, a kindly widower. Long ago, Donald Richie pointed out the importance of parallelism in Ozu: every person or circumstance is echoed or inverted elsewhere. Into these parallels Ozu inserts prefigurations of future action, motifs that connect characters (gestures, lines of dialogue, props such as watches or cups), and daring ellipses that skip over important events. (Once he has us hooked, he can tease us by withholding what we want to see.) And the ending and epilogue have the inevitability of the final grand lines of a poem. Look more closely, and each Ozu film has a magnificently filigreed structure, and everything that happens seems quietly destined from the start.

Third look: The simplicity of style. What could be easier than to shoot each scene with a master shot, followed by medium shots? Each character, no matter how minor, gets their single, and no cut interrupts a line of dialogue, ever. A few establishing shots will link one scene with another. The camera is set low in nearly every shot, as if to eliminate any decision about where else it might be put, and it almost never moves. This, surely, is Moviemaking 101.

Look again, and it all becomes staggeringly complicated. Each shot is composed meticulously, down to the arrangement of food on the table. The compositions mirror each other uncannily: every medium-shot single puts the person's face in the same part of the frame, so that the eyes of one character weirdly match those of another. Indeed, Ozu's bold play with graphic qualities, lines, masses, and colour from shot to shot are without peer in mainstream filmmaking. Camera position doesn't mimic a seated person's view (it's obstinately low even in train corridors and on sidewalks); it subjects the entire visible world to a precise patterning.

Thanks to this maniacally repeated framing, layers of space bristle with tantalising possibilities, and mundane bits of setting, like a red tea-kettle or a hanging sock-tree, come alive. And the intermediate spaces that link scenes often don't establish space very clearly. Instead, they hook one area to another by visual rhymes. The transitions also play games with our expectations: we may think we are going one place, but something, perhaps only the shadows of rippling water cast on a screen, swerves us to a different locale. Thanks to his apparently simple stories and easily grasped technique, Ozu has captivated and moved audiences for seventy years. But this humble artisan who compared himself to a tofu-seller created a cinema of which no other director dreamed. Modest in effect, yet extravagantly precise in execution, Ozu's films are at once directly enjoyable, emotionally powerful, and artistically experimental. He tests his characters, his medium, his audience, and himself. His films show us how rich a genre- and star-driven movie can be; at the same time they open up a vast realm of purely cinematic possibilities. No filmmaker, to my mind, has come closer to perfection.

Is Ozu slow? - Jonathan Rosenbaum

I was recently having dinner at one of my favourite Chinese restaurants in Chicago, where the waiter happens to be a passionate cine-phile. While taking my order, the waiter was telling me about his enthusiasm for Tsai Ming-liang, and when I mentioned that I would be speaking about Yasujiro Ozu in Tokyo shortly, he said to me, 'I don't know about Ozu. His films are so slow'. The following remarks are an attempt to respond to his comment.

My first response is to say that some of Ozu's silent films-in particular I Was Born, But…, one of my favourites-aren't very slow at all, and it's symptomatic of the limitations of global film culture today that silent cinema is often ruled out of order in advance. But my second response is to ask what we mean when we call a film 'slow'-an adjective that's frequently pejorative, even when it's used in relation to films by Robert Bresson, Carl Dreyer, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Abbas Kiarostami, F.W. Murnau, Ozu, Jacques Rivette, Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Jacques Tati, among others. And to pose this question with particular reference to Japanese culture, I'd like to introduce a couple of hypotheses.

One of these hypotheses comes from a provocative short essay by Karlheinz Stockhausen called 'Ceremonial Japan' that I first read in the Times Literary Supplement a quarter of a century ago. Exploring his fascination with a diverse variety of Japanese ceremonial forms-the Noh theatre, Omizutori (the Water Consecration Festival), Sumo wrestling, and the tea ceremony-Stockhausen has the following to say about what he calls Japanese timing: 'Where timing is concerned, the European is absolutely mediocre. Which means he has settled down somewhere in the middle of his range of potential tempi. It is a very narrow range, compared with the extremely fast reactions that a Japanese [person] might have at a certain moment, and to the extremely slow reaction that he might show on another occasion. He has a poor middle range compared to the European'. Stockhausen also implies that this distinction is in danger of being effaced or at least eroded by the Westernisation and Americanisation of Japan. This is a delicate matter, because we know from the persuasive arguments in Shigehiko Hasumi's book on Ozu, Yasujiro Ozu, that Ozu's work also reflects to some degree the impact of America on Japanese culture. But because Hasumi is a Japanese critic looking at American influence and I'm an American critic looking at Japanese elements, we see things with a somewhat different emphasis. In any case, I would like to suggest-and this is my second hypothesis-that the fast reactions in Japanese spectators implied in Ozu's filmmaking practice often correspond to standing and walking, and that the slow reactions implied in his filmmaking practice often correspond to sitting.

What do I mean by this? The elements in I Was Born, But… that I identify as fast-in particular, the brevity of certain still shots of locations and the speed of certain camera movements-can be linked to either an implied standing spectator or an implied walking spectator, and when the camera movements follow characters who are walking, the speed of the characters and the implied speed of the spectators watching them are clearly linked. Furthermore, the elements in the film that I identify as slow mainly occur when characters are seated.

Now, it's obvious that most of us watch films while we're seated. But just because it's obvious doesn't mean that it isn't worthy of some reflection-and reflection, after all, is something else that's often best done while we're sitting. Yet the artificial sensation of speed that characterises so much of contemporary commercial cinema, American cinema in particular-the speed of fast cars and explosions and what we call 'action', not to mention the speed of much TV editing, all of which tends to make Ozu seem 'conservative' and 'old-fashioned' by comparison-tends to deny this fact, to operate as if we were literally watching films on the run, without any opportunities for reflection. Ozu's acknowledgment that we watch films while sitting seems to me a fundamental aspect of his style, and a great deal that is considered difficult or problematical or simply 'slow' in his style derives from this essential fact.

As a rule, characters in Ozu films are seated when they eat and when they converse. In I was Born, But…, the two little boys who are the central characters are mainly seen on their feet, but early in the film they are seated when they have breakfast, when they put on their shoes before leaving their house, and then when they decide to skip school and have their lunch in a field. They are also seated when they attend school the following day, when they watch home movies at the home of their father's boss, and later, after their fight with their father, when they refuse to eat. All of these occasions might be described as times of relative reflection.

But this is a film in which social behaviour and social conditioning are at least as important as reflection, and the issue of speed is relevant to all three activities. Early in the film, after the boys skip school out of fear of getting beaten up and have their lunch in the field, one of the brothers reminds the other: 'We're supposed to get an A in writing today'. Soon afterwards they both stand up to finish their lunch on their feet, an action that implies, as much else in the film does, that getting ahead in the world requires alertness and motion, both of which are usually more obtainable from a standing position.

As if to demonstrate this point, the film then cuts to the other boys at school standing at attention in the school yard and following the instructions of a teacher to turn and then to march in a military fashion. The camera remains stationary during most of this activity, but then, as the boys march briskly past the camera from right to left, the camera begins to track rapidly in the reverse direction, from left to right. Then there is a cut to another rapid left-to-right track in the office where the boys' father works-a famous shot moving at the same speed past workers at a row of desks, some of them seated and some standing. Each worker yawns as if on cue just as the camera passes him, except for one, until the camera moves back to him in the reverse direction, stops, and waits for him to yawn as well; as soon as he does, the camera resumes the same rapid left-to-right movement past other workers, all of whom yawn on cue. This is a rather exceptional modernist moment in Ozu's work because it equates his own position of power as a director with the power of the state-specifically, with the power of the school and the office, the two principal zones of authority in the film, apart from the more indeterminate zones of the field (ruled by the boys) and the house (ruled by the father). Significantly, it is in the field and in the house where conflict breaks out in the film-not in the school or in the office, where the laws of behaviour are more absolute-and by drawing a parallel based on speed and motion between the school and the office, and focusing comically in both locations on individuals who fail to conform, Ozu is providing a particular context for the conflicts that arise elsewhere. Furthermore, by drawing an explicit parallel between the authority exerted by his camera and the authority exerted by the school and the office, Ozu is explicitly positing an important relationship between cinematic forms and social forms, a relationship that carries a great deal of meaning throughout his work.

Performance in the films of Yasujiro Ozu - Donald Richie

One of the most moving sequences in any Ozu film is the Noh-drama sequence in Late Spring. The director wanted to show a daughter (Setsuko Hara) becoming aware of the interest her father (Chishu Ryu) supposedly has in marrying an acquaintance (Kuniko Miyake). Since some very delicate feelings are involved, Ozu did not want to use dialogue. He wished to show rather than state, and so he chose to set that scene at a Noh-drama performance and the only sound during this sequence is the sound of Noh itself.

In turn father, daughter, acquaintance, and the Noh itself are shown. The action is merely the father's nodding a greeting, the woman's polite response, and the daughter's suspicions. This sequence runs for approximately three minutes and is composed of twenty-six separate shots. It is one of Ozu's most beautifully edited segments. There is not one wasted moment and each scene follows the next with a perfect visual logic. At the same time, it transforms what we are shown.

One may imagine how another director might have done this sequence-probably five shots or so, one for each character and two for the play itself. The central point, that Hara does not want her father to marry, would have been rapidly made and we would have rushed to the next sequence. By the end of the film, we would have forgotten the entire incident or else would have remembered it only as a plot complication.

This sequence in Late Spring is unforgettable, however, and the reason is entirely in Ozu's presentation. By insisting that we comprehend and hence appreciate the Noh, by making the scene long and yet integral to the sequence itself, he creates a nexus that transforms his material.

The Noh context lends a dignity to a plot point that seen in any other way might have perhaps seemed slight. By entwining his three characters with the Noh itself, he transforms their concerns. Noh is about things more important than getting married-it is about things like dying, like the after-life.

The Noh play we are seeing is one that shows that the mundane human dancer is really a deity in disguise. The transcendental quality of mujo, a celebration of the transience of all things, thus becomes an extension of this family anecdote. Its reverberations illuminate their complications-something Ozu himself acknowledges when, in the final scene in the sequence, we leave the theatre and watch a tree in the wind as the music of the Noh continues.

The effects of this sequence are many, but among them is a display of Ozu's respect for the Noh, his refusal to cut it short in order to merely forward the plot. This show of respect is common to many of his pictures. He respects everything in his films. He refuses plot because, as he once said, plot uses people and to use people is to misuse them. The very way we are shown his people respects them-a quality that, as Sato Tadao has said, makes us feel like guests and encourages us to behave properly. This respect is also shown in the extraordinary length given to scenes of performance (such as the Noh) in his films.

This may be a bit long, says Chishu Ryu at the end of Early Autumn, and then launches into a formal kodan recitation-all of it. Even when the performance is less imposing, we still watch most of it. The naniwabushi recitation at the beginning of Passing Fancy is given full screen time, as is the lengthy and delightful hayashi rendition (again sung by Chishu Ryu) in Record of a Tenement Gentleman.

There are many Kabuki performances in Ozu's films, each accorded full attention. There are trips to Kabuki theatre in What Did the Lady Forget? and Early Summer; there are stretches of provincial Kabuki performance in both The Story of Floating Weeds and the later Floating Weeds. Then there is the half-hour Kagamijishi, a rendition of an actual Kabuki dance.

The geisha dances in What Did the Lady Forget? go on for much longer than their plot-point use would indicate, and even other motion pictures, when shown, are shown at length-the home movies in I Was Born, But…; the Lubitsch episode from If I Had a Million, seen in Woman of Tokyo; long scenes from Willy Forst's Leise Flahen Meine Leider, shown in The Only Son. Even the televised baseball in Good Morning is shown at a respectful length, which few other directors would have allowed.

Amateur performances are treated with the same respect as those more professional. The delightfully spontaneous singing among the mah-jong players in Early Spring, the war songs executed in An Autumn Afternoon, and the long and unforgettable final scene of Equinox Flower, showing the reformed father (Shin Saburi) humming to himself as he sits in the train going off to meet his forgiven daughter-all of these scenes of performance are given a dignity that is rare in any cinema. We pay proper attention, and through this we come to an accord with the character.

When we couple this with an emotional understanding of the import of a scene, then the performance (the drunk father singing the Navy March at the end of An Autumn Afternoon, the sober father peeling an apple at the end of Late Spring) allows us to look deeper and to detect a kind of mutability-mujo.

Ozu and the West - Nick Wrigley

Remarkably, Ozu's films were rarely seen in the West until the early 1970s (there had been a small tour of his films in the United States in the 1960s). His bare-bone narratives and idiosyncratic style never appealed to distributors at the time, who felt they were just 'too Japanese' for Western audiences. These distributors never accused Bresson of being 'too French', however, and it seems that they alone were responsible for Ozu's delayed exposure to the West. Maybe they thought Ozu's themes and titles were too similar and thus confusing? After all, most of Ozu's later work (1950s-1960s) centred on the same motif: the marrying off of a loyal daughter so that she could begin to live her own life. When Ozu's films did start getting shown in the West, art-cinema aficionados of Bresson's, Bergman's, and Antonioni's formal styles were ecstatic to find a Japanese master whose films spoke as eloquently about Japanese life as their favourite European films did of their respective homelands.

Fragments consultables a la web del Brisbane International Film Festival