Nobuo Nakamura

Late Autumn Review

Very Good

Yasujiro Ozu has fun with a group of old friends who bumble through some ridiculous attempts at matchmaking in Late Autumn, a lighthearted yet poignant look at how people with the best intentions can sometimes make a mess of things on the way to a happy outcome. "Life by itself is surprisingly simple," says one character. If only that were true.

We begin at a temple ceremony marking the anniversary of the death of Mr. Miwa. His lovely widow Akiko (Setsuko Hara) is in attendance with her 24-year old daughter Ayako (Yôko Tsukasa). Miwa's old friends show up, and we soon learn that three of them were all once in love with Akiko, and they admire her to this day. Now that the time has come to find a good husband for Ayako, they plot among themselves to get this problem solved, with one of the men, Taguchi (Nobuo Nakamura), taking the lead.

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Tokyo Story Review

By Jake Euker

Essential

The works of director Yasujiro Ozu, who worked for many decades before his death in 1963, embody a certain classical approach to filmmaking in Japan. His films are slow-moving, meditative, and austerely stylized, and they return again and again to the same themes: the life of the family, the interaction between generations, the basic sadness of life and the ways in which honest people can overcome it. His style is so complete in its serenity and his output so monumental that it took a whole generation of younger directors, led by his one-time student Shohei Imamura, to react against him, as though Ozu's influence required a Herculean effort to work out of the Japanese film industry's system. And if cameras were to move, if the underside of life in Japan was to be portrayed on the screen, if violence and sex were to find their way into that country's cinema, it had to be. Ozu's body of work stood in opposition.

Because of the contemplative nature of Ozu's work, Western audiences strive to find something Eastern and spiritual in them. But Ozu's true greatness lies in exactly the opposite quality; below the Zen-like peace of their surfaces, the films tell stories as universal as any ever have. His 1953 Tokyo Story is the classic example: an aging couple travel to Tokyo to visit their children, but find that their children have little time for them when they arrive. Traveling back to their small town, the mother becomes sick and dies, and her surviving spouse and children come to terms with her loss.

Continue reading: Tokyo Story Review

Tokyo Story Review

By Jake Euker

Essential

The works of director Yasujiro Ozu, who worked for many decades before his death in 1963, embody a certain classical approach to filmmaking in Japan. His films are slow-moving, meditative, and austerely stylized, and they return again and again to the same themes: the life of the family, the interaction between generations, the basic sadness of life and the ways in which honest people can overcome it. His style is so complete in its serenity and his output so monumental that it took a whole generation of younger directors, led by his one-time student Shohei Imamura, to react against him, as though Ozu's influence required a Herculean effort to work out of the Japanese film industry's system. And if cameras were to move, if the underside of life in Japan was to be portrayed on the screen, if violence and sex were to find their way into that country's cinema, it had to be. Ozu's body of work stood in opposition.

Because of the contemplative nature of Ozu's work, Western audiences strive to find something Eastern and spiritual in them. But Ozu's true greatness lies in exactly the opposite quality; below the Zen-like peace of their surfaces, the films tell stories as universal as any ever have. His 1953 Tokyo Story is the classic example: an aging couple travel to Tokyo to visit their children, but find that their children have little time for them when they arrive. Traveling back to their small town, the mother becomes sick and dies, and her surviving spouse and children come to terms with her loss.

Continue reading: Tokyo Story Review