Ozu, 1953, 135m
It is a long and slow movie, but never tiring. Although a drama of domestic life, it has many suspenseful moments. In one such, the father, having no lodgings, lands up at his daughter's house drunk, and is chided like an infant. They are people who do not fit into their children's busy lives in the big city. Boats floating past, rippling sea, smoking chimneys, railway stations, a mound of marble grave stones, a moth beats against a lighted bulb as an old lady breathes her last. The film was the director's top choice in the Sight and Sound poll 2012--it's always more difficult to see something as it stands on it's own, when it is so highly lauded. It's also a picture of life in Japan at the time, hypnotic in cinematography, steeped in the rhythms of time and place. We see the strange mixture of westernization and tradition.This is a gentle, powerful, beautiful film.
It is a long and slow movie, but never tiring. Although a drama of domestic life, it has many suspenseful moments. In one such, the father, having no lodgings, lands up at his daughter's house drunk, and is chided like an infant. They are people who do not fit into their children's busy lives in the big city. Boats floating past, rippling sea, smoking chimneys, railway stations, a mound of marble grave stones, a moth beats against a lighted bulb as an old lady breathes her last. The film was the director's top choice in the Sight and Sound poll 2012--it's always more difficult to see something as it stands on it's own, when it is so highly lauded. It's also a picture of life in Japan at the time, hypnotic in cinematography, steeped in the rhythms of time and place. We see the strange mixture of westernization and tradition.This is a gentle, powerful, beautiful film.
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