The dullness of Ozu's films lies first and foremost in the dullness of the camera language. It is always a fixed camera position slightly higher than the tatami, and there are few shots cut, and all the characters live their lives under the slow narrative of long shots. You can neither feel the beauty brought by the delicate composition, nor enjoy the excitement of montage, nor the picturesque scenery, nor the local customs, but only empty shots of messy furniture and empty houses.
His dullness is also reflected in the dullness of the plot. Ozu's films are always inseparable from Japanese family life. The characters are always sitting on their knees, saying and doing something, while the audience is like a neighbor who inadvertently intrudes into someone's home, listening and watching everything. There is little drama to be found, just the blandness of everyday life. Birth, old age, sickness and death, marriage, funeral, marriage, that's all.
In fact, if you can watch it, you will find that Ozu's movies are not boring at all. Boredom is just a narrative method in his films, and those who can't get into the film are just because they don't have an empathic understanding of what he wants to express. Once you really enter the world of Ozu, you will find his great achievements in film art.
"Tokyo Story" is undoubtedly Ozu's most famous work. For many viewers, such a film, which is almost sketchy in terms of plot and dialogue, may be as dull as white water. But it is precisely such a film that has been regarded as a standard by countless film critics and media, and it ranks among the best and even comes out on top in many lists of the "greatest films in film history". In my opinion, its charm lies in the splendidness of human nature and emotion under the soothing narration like a stream, and in the cruelty concealed by the peaceful lens.
Family affection and ethics are the eternal themes of Ozu. Under the surface warmth, he pays more attention to the deterioration of the relationship between relatives and the disintegration of traditional interpersonal relationships amid the great changes in society. "Tokyo Story" is also an important turning point in his creative process. Previously, he seemed to have more hope for life. The tone of the film was relatively humorous and light, but at the end of his creation, his style turned to cheerful again, showing See the open-mindedness and relief of the world. This film and the subsequent works such as "Early Spring" and "Twilight in Tokyo" focus on the rare melancholy and melancholy in Ozu's entire creative career, and also endow the film with more moral critical significance and a realistic style.
"Tokyo Story" is such a film. When you watch it, you will always be deceived by the deliberately created calmness and indifference. Once the curtain falls, when you look back on it, you can't restrain your inner compassion. Under Ozu's iconic flat lens language, the actor has almost no emotional ups and downs, only a few tears flashed past, and it is this almost indifferent gesture that makes people feel more desolate.
The Hirayamas were full of hope before they set off. When their children are prosperous, parents naturally go there with a review-like attitude, thinking that they can enjoy their family in peace. The attitude of the children can not be said to be cold, but a kind of polite and thoughtful. Such a reception like completing a task further reflects the gradual demise of ethics amid the collision between tradition and modernity. The reason why children are willing to welcome the elderly is that on the one hand, they are afraid of the reputation of being unfilial, and on the other hand, they are also to reassure themselves, but in fact, in their subconscious, they do not want the elderly to disturb their peaceful life. So they would rather spend a sum of money to let their parents go to the resort, and when the second old man couldn't get used to it and returned, the daughter's impatient magic and almost utter reproach made people feel chilled.
The scene where the father and old friend are drinking in an izakaya is one of the few escape scenes from Ozu's serene story. The reason why it is important and cannot be abandoned is that Ozu not only further showed the loneliness of the old man, but also deeply reflected on the cruelty of war in the drunken babble of the three old men. "It's better to be defeated." Such words appear several times in Ozu's different films. The director once participated in the war of aggression against China as a member of the Army's gas field gas unit, and many people questioned that he did not reflect on militarism in the post-war films. In fact, with the lightness of the clouds in Ozu's film, such a short sentence has already entrusted his thinking. None of the old people who lost their sons in the war cried, but laughed and shouted. This is more infectious than the hysterical tearjerker, and all the tragic and pain are spread silently in this laughter. They escape reality with drunkenness, and fill their hearts with memories of the past.
Parents are here, not far away. The process of urbanization has destroyed the basic rituals of Confucian filial piety. The scattered family members, both in intention and in essence, symbolize the most basic unit of oriental traditional society, the family, which does not exist in the original sense. We may not be able to accuse our children of being unfilial, because they are already busy with their careers and taking care of their families, and they are already under a lot of pressure. We can't accuse grandchildren of being disrespectful either. For two old people who have never met, even if blood is thicker than water, they can't make them feel as close and awe as their parents. And it is this irreproachable situation that makes us reflect on the society that caused it all. Under the rumbling tracks of the economic express train, we have gained a dazzling array of prosperity and unprecedented material freedom, and we are going, and what is it?
The mother was overwhelmed by the fatigue of the trip, fell ill on the way home, and finally died. The children came in a hurry and left in a hurry. Here, the relationship between parent and child has been reduced and reduced to an obligation, an interpersonal relationship that does not come from the heart but is socially established. The tears of daughter Zhiquan and son Jingsan do not seem to be fake, but this belated mourning is not so much repentance, but rather a kind of comfort to their guilt. The child wants to support but the parent does not wait, at least, it is not that he has no idea of filial piety to his parents. In this way, you can live with peace of mind.
From beginning to end, only the second son's widow, Noriko, treated the two old men sincerely. Perhaps it was her own loneliness that allowed her to better understand what the old man needed. In her humble home, there is still a portrait of her deceased husband who has been dead for eight years, and even a tea cup is borrowed from the neighbors, expressing her usual seclusion. Her caring and caring may not have been influenced by a trace of traditional ethics, but she is kind, and she is more filial to her deceased husband from the bottom of her heart. The mother-in-law Fuzi spent the most peaceful and peaceful night in her whole trip. When Fuzi passed away unfortunately, the children left one after another, and it was she who silently accompanied her father-in-law, Zhou Ji, who lost her spouse. Her gentleness is like jade, and in the suffocating cruelty of the whole film, she left a little hope of humanity. Only at the end, in the face of her father-in-law's persuasion, her tears told us that this most gentle and kind-hearted woman is also the loneliest and loneliest one. The heaven and the earth are not benevolent, and all things are regarded as dogs, which is probably what it means.
As a master in Japanese and even world film history, Yasujiro Ozu's lens aesthetics may not be copied. As the German director Wenders said, the Tokyo under his lens no longer exists, so such a classic Japanese-style film that complements each other no longer has the soil to survive. But on the contrary, it is the theme he discusses that can develop across the times and still has rich practical significance in today's context.
In terms of rapid urbanization and economic development, China, which has been in existence since the 1980s, seems to have more comparability with Japan after the war, so the story under Ozu's lens can also make many Chinese people in our era sit in the right seat. Empty-nest elderly, left-behind children, our era is many times more complicated than Tokyo under Ozu's lens. In the past 2013, Zhao Baogang's "The Old Ones" made people sigh. Although one was a movie and the other was a TV, one placed everything under the ice, and the other showed the wound with blood, but the theme And deep meaning, but do not coincide. It's just that Ozu's expression is deeper, sharper, and more realistic than the times.
At the beginning and end of the film, the director took a set of contrasting shots with almost the same composition. Before departure, the Hirayama couple packed their luggage, the neighbors kindly inquired at the window, and the two elders were smiling and full of longing. In the end, the old man Hirayama sat alone on the tatami, and the neighbor greeted him with sympathy. The old man smiled and said that life alone will be very long in the future. Outside the house, the Seto Inland Sea flows slowly, and the years have passed, and Zhaohua has passed away.
Some things, like the waves rushing to the sea, never come back.
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