About acting like a spoiled child... The men in "The Flower of the Other Side"

Marrying, having children, adopting children to adulthood, and then the children are independent one by one, and parents and children are separated. This is a simple logic and an order for a person to be born in the world. Gilles Deleuze made it into the sequence of Ozu, so when the daughter is unwilling to marry ("Late Spring") or concealed and finds the wishful husband without authorization ("The Flower of the Other Side"), it will trigger a reverse violation of the sequence. It is the emotional trauma caused by the reverse that makes the simple logic of life and drama produce such disturbing emotions. In the film, when the daughter is unwilling to leave the father, or the father interferes in the daughter's marriage, or when the unfilial children cause harm to the parents, they are testing this unsatisfactory routine - when a certain time comes , it is inevitable, even necessary, for children to leave their parents. The reason why the painful daughter or father in the film feels hurt is that they know this is what they should - marry a daughter or leave their parents and live their own lives - but they don't want to fulfill this "should" from the bottom of their hearts. This kind of emotion appeared in the hearts of the father and daughter who did not want to leave each other in "Late Spring", and also in the hearts of the father in "The Flower of the Other Side" who knew that his son-in-law was worthy of praise but still did not want to give up his daughter. At the same time, in "Tokyo Story" To their parents, they seemed to take the risk of going to Tokyo with a desire to retrieve the good feelings about the family that remained in their hearts, and of course they were given a cold reception in accordance with the laws of nature and drama. Tadao Sato calls Ozu's ambivalence "coquettish", which is an apt word. All fathers will eventually let go, all daughters will be married, and both have their own lives, splitting from one family into two families, although still related by blood, but in the social relationship graph they become two parallel lines. This split is nothing more than the most brutal change and a fact that must be faced for Ozu-style conformist (non-pejorative) characters. Before feeling such a cruel fact, all they can do is "play a baby", and there is only one The purpose is to hope that the other party can accurately realize their own contradictions, tolerate, comfort and identify with such an emotional state. So when the daughter lay side by side with her father on the eve of her marriage, and enjoyed the emotional possession of each other for the last time, the tears that slipped down her face had an accurate sense of beauty. It was a kind of reluctance to part. The sentimentality of the audience is equally aroused in this subtle gesture. Such a beautiful emotional rope is about to become a thing of the past, and it is overwhelming, and everyone feels the insecurity firmly, and the memory of the past is as important as the attachment to the now that is about to become the past. Wanting and heartbreaking. Ozu's films are nothing more than convey sighs and sighs. Flowers on the other side, the taste of saury, late spring, wheat autumn... These words remind the audience of those good times, especially when they appear on the hemp subtitles that make people feel stroking and synaesthesia. The old man in the film always likes to hang out in pubs and other places, just to be able to recall the beautiful moments in his memory with his old-fashioned companions, or to find a partner who can recall the good moments with him. When they find each other, They can "act coquettishly" with each other (in "The Flower of the Other Side", the chorus of a group of fathers who are experiencing the pain of marrying a daughter), and when they can't find a partner who has a common experience, they become more lonely and lonely ("The Flower of the Other Side") The ex-soldier who can only sing alone in "The Taste of Saury" is funny and embarrassing). Ozu's description obviously creates such an atmosphere. Successful coquetry makes the good times in memory even better, and creates an inexplicable and strong emotional dependence between the old man and the audience who can't find the coquettish object in the play. . However, in the end, all people who are willing or unwilling can only face one thing. In the end, they are all isolated. The reality and the present are cold. Relying on good memories to keep warm will always cool down. Ozu always makes people face this. The harsh reality, like the heartbreak he brought to us when he made two old men sit side by side in front of the ocean (Tokyo Story), couldn't cry, but heard things shatter. At the same time, it's interesting and meaningful that the characters' sense of dependence on each other is natural, not sentimental and disgusting. The widower's father and the daughter-in-waiting's mutual care and needs, the complementarity of genders and the harmony in life, are shown by their steady and full character composition in the meal scene, and the natural harmony of conversation, and will be What breaks this harmony is the natural law of children to live independently from their parents. Like civil servants, fathers and daughters strictly require themselves to abide by such laws, and like monks and nuns, they suppress their instinctive emotional desires and force themselves to make changes. If it weren't for such a law at work, such a harmonious family relationship would continue until one of them died, which was inevitable, and the other would eventually have to face their shared good times over memory functions in the cerebral cortex The burden and depression caused by the nerves.

In Ozu's films, those who are extremely sensitive to the cold reality and want to reminisce about the good times are always men. Compared with sentimental men, women are always rational and cold individuals. In "The Flower of the Other Shore", when the wayward father interferes, the mother shows a character attribute more like an elder. There is a scene in the play that vividly explains this kind of character arrangement: Yukiko set a trap and told Setsuko's father the same experience she had with Setsuko (and the previous scene where Yukiko and Setsuko agreed to help each other) A causal connection), when the father expressed his approval of her actions, Yukiko beheaded and then showed the gesture of the father to the three women (including the mother and sister) of Setsuko. However, when the father returned home to face the smiling and contented mother (she did not approve of the marriage at first), he regretted his statement. The reason was of course that Yukiko was not a daughter. As a bystander, he could easily The statement, for the statement of the biological daughter, can not be successfully completed, which contains ambivalence. However, the reason for this is not understood, especially the mother, so in the dialogue between the two, the dissatisfaction of both sides gradually escalated. When the father said that he would not go to his daughter's wedding, the mother really started to get angry, so she said that if the father did not go, he would not go, the psychological change of the father at this time was even more intriguing, and he became anxious instead. In fact, the father has always been reluctant to screw up his daughter's marriage, but just wants to be able to "act like a spoiled child" for the last time before his daughter leaves the house. The rational mother didn't realize it at this time, or she realized it, but the father's easy words not to go to the wedding were too much for her to tolerate the father's child psychology. So she got really angry, and at first she decided to throw her hands away, but she still came back, put away her smile, and sat upright. With a serious face and downcast eyes, the father kept looking up at the mother. This subtle relationship of strength and weakness formed in the sight is also reflected in the dialogue. The mother, in contrast to the meek tone, spit out the lessons she was about to say like a typewriter. She blamed her father for "saying one thing and doing another." You can imagine how majestic and rational she is. However, in the face of such a scolding question, my father took a light-hearted answer: "Parents all over the world are like this, how can you say one thing and do another." In the mother's view, the "very absurd" behavior is a testament to the sentimental psychology of the father. At the beginning, he even questioned his mother willfully like a child: "When did you stand on their side." And the mother's answer - "It's not a question of whose side you are on.

Older women are always a paternalistic, cold and rational gesture in Ozu's films. Maybe this is related to his personal experience. He can still live with his old mother when he is an adult. Maybe Ozu also often disagrees in words and actions. Mother coquettish. And the mother may always be unaware of the child's soft heart in an irritating gesture. So the old mother in "Tokyo Story" died first, and her death was the death of the real parent, which made the whole film lose the sense of security brought by authority, and the sadness of the old father was even more sad-he lost forever to act like a spoiled child Object. In "Late Spring" or "The Taste of Saury", the mother is simply absent, and the father faces his own contradictory situation; Carrying out the principle of rational behavior, their existence makes men have to look for coquettish objects outside the family. In "The Flowers of the Other Side", a group of old men sing songs to mourn the integrity of the family taken away by their daughter's marriage. All the old men sit around and sing, like a group of warriors who are experiencing weathering, which is both sympathetic and funny. This kind of funny is not the psychological reaction when you watch the circus performance, but the psychological reaction when you see a child showing self-pity that is still not understanding of the world, and you want to comfort him. eager.

Through his films, Ozu shows us more or less the sense of security of his own happiness, and women are often the source of security. No matter how contradictory the father is, the mother is always the most sober decision-maker. When the father cannot make a rational decision, she is the adjuster of the entire order. At first, her decision to marry her daughter was subordinate to her father. Ozu showed a laudable and habitual affirmation of traditional women. However, when she saw how irrational and willful her father's decision was, she acted as a real The elders and decision makers let the father's friends be the lobbyists. The mother's behavior is not expressed through direct description. However, when we see the confused expression of the father when facing his friends, it seems that we see a child who is not valued by adults. Annoyed, the mother's reaction was somewhat unintelligible to the father. Her father's reminders were evasive answers in the face of reproach and questioning, and reluctance to order her mother to turn off the radio. The mother's smile when she turned off the radio put aside her previous anger. As an elderly woman, the mother tolerated her father's waywardness through this meaningful smile, and exposed her understanding of her father's behavior. In her eyes, A father as a man is just a child.

However, the father was still not satisfied. He needed a companion who could immerse himself in the conflicting emotions and find the pleasure that was both distressing and sweet. In "The Taste of Saury", the old father always goes to the tavern that no one cares about when his feelings are frustrated. The reason why he frequents it is definitely not that the wine here is better than others. , but he needs to find an object who can accept his coquettishness in a straightforward way. For these men, strangers or friends are always more suitable to play their roles than relatives. Setsuko's father found a group of men who had the same situation and mood as him. Each of them is going through the pain of marrying a daughter, and one of them has seven daughters. When the man with seven daughters was mocked by his peers, he was helpless and taciturn. It was a kind of silence after repeated torture, and his peers who laughed at him, even though they knew his situation, still pressed him about what he was doing. Several daughters, this is obviously a joke, and the other party is not angry, but cooperates to respond as it should, which should also be regarded as a kind of coquetry. And when the men sing together around the table, it is the most emotional and harmonious moment in the film. At this moment, all the (men) men found what they were looking for. In addition, the direct depiction of traditional art that often appears in Ozu's films can be seen as the protagonist's effort to find a past that makes him feel stable and can act like a spoiled child.

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