LATE SPRING Movie Review

This masterpiece by Japan's Yasujiro Ozu tells a story that Ozu has related, with variations, many times: A widower (Chishu Ryu) living with his unmarried daughter is torn between the joy of her companionship and care, and the knowledge that she needs to create a life of her own apart from him. He knows that her devotion to him will prevent her from seeking a husband, so he tells her that he's going to remarry, knowing that she'll have no choice but to go out on her own and begin the independent life that is the natural state of things. Alone in his home at the end of the film, his plan successfully accomplished, the old man sits silently and peels a piece of fruit, growing completely still momentarily as he contemplates his future and the inexorable pattern of life. It may be the most powerful and characteristic single image in all of Ozu's films, perfectly summing up his philosophy of mono no aware, or the serene acceptance of the inevitable sadness of life. For many years, Ozu's films were thought to be “too Japanese” for export—that western audiences in particular would find them less appealing than some of the action-packed samurai films they were used to. In fact, Ozu's films, like some of Chaplin's masterworks, are as universal as the cinema—or any art form—can be. Films like Late Spring, Tokyo Story, and An Autumn Afternoon are brilliant distillations of our great human dilemma; how can we experience joy when we know that suffering inevitably awaits? Neither depressing nor maudlin, Ozu's view is both reassuring and bracing, and one of the highest, noblest peaks of the cinema's first century.

NEXT STOP … Floating Weeds, Late Autumn, Tokyo Story

1949 107m/B JP Setsuko Hara, Chishu Ryu, Jun Usami, Haruko Sugimura; D: Yasujiro Ozu. VHS NYF, FCT