Better not pout about a horizon

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Pascale can't lose though we lost her
Among so many dream projects, I've been meaning to get to know Rohmer's movies for some time now. Funny how news like yesterday's can make you want to jump so much quicker into such an endeavor. But, as it stands, I'm going to stick to my guns and, despite my love of words and pretty ladies, keep M. Schérer on the shelf for now. For now, among the standard rep-house coverage and viewing logs you've come to expect from me, I'm going to begin two other overdue re-acquaintance projects.

First off, thanks to Danny I've got now those two Eclipse box sets of Ozu (silent + late) as well as Early Summer at my disposal, not to mention my own copy of Tokyo Story, and I plan on making a biweekly habit of watching one of these films and writing about it. What's more, I'll get a bonus on Feb. 19th, when PFA screens That Night’s Wife, a 1930 silent crime melodrama. So, stay tuned for a newly christened series I hope to expand beyond just these discs as the year carries on, via Netflix and other, um, subterranean means: I'm going to start crafting An Ozu Zone. I think I'll get cracking at it as soon as next week, or as soon as I get a few other writing assignments completed. (Gotta have priorities, even in the blog life.)


Next month I'd like to start a participatory series. As I proposed on the new Facebook page for VINYL IS HEAVY (become a fan why don't you!), I was thinking it might be fun to set up a little reading and watching group structured by one of my favorite Stanley Cavell books, Cities of Words. There are a lot of things motivating this idea. First, as I said, I think it'd be fun. Second, this book (along with Pursuits of Happiness) kind of changed my life when I met it and read it for the first time three years ago in my first seminar back at Berkeley. Third, I love the movies and texts that Cavell converses with and highlights for us. Fourth, the book is structured like a semester, as Cavell writes in his preface, which will provide a good structure for our eventual discussions—as I envision the comments section exploding with thoughtful parries and volleys—about such topics as Freud and The Lady Eve (to say snakes and sharks and moms and dads and sex) or Aristotle and The Awful Truth (to say questions of audience and appeal and sameness and difference) or—get this—Shakespeare and Rohmer and their respective winter tales, which I, no doubt, will try my best to link to Desplechin's, which, clearly, tells me I may well wind up jumping into some Rohmer before long after all.

I say "next month" above because that kind of lag time not only allows me a head start but also gives you enough time to go out and buy the Cavell book, or borrow it from a local library, and maybe even get cracking on some of the films, too—though I would by all means stress the fun of watching the films strictly in tandem with the chapters written about them. In any case, here you have it: I'm giving you two full weeks to get ready to play your part. Now, don't get me wrong, I can't presume that many of my readers out there will actually follow me on this silly little autodidact trip but, believe me, I think it'd be worth everybody's time. And we all might learn a few extra things along the way with a lively comments conversation. Even if you don't read and watch along with me and wind up just reading the write-ups here, I do hope you join me for some fun filosofy lip flappin below the fold/s.

And if all that fails to generate some talk, I'll tell you right now: I'm also planning on recapping/analyzing Lost every week of its final season. That I don't have to worry about people joining in on, do I?

Pointing at the Screen

by Steven Boone

Yasujiro Ozu's Late Spring (1949) is a masterpiece of love, time, life and death, but it's hard to capture in words. Roger Ebert found a way to describe some of the finer qualities and themes coursing through this portrait of a father and daughter learning to let each other go, but I'm stuck pointing at the screen, going, "Look at that! Did you see that?" Ozu's images just outrun my words.

So I gathered some of those images into a montage (see below). You might call it a visual critique, but I have only praise for Late Spring, which sensitizes a viewer to such a degree that I'm almost sorry for seeing the tougher, bleaker Tokyo Story (1953) first. The former points shyly, sadly, to the latter. And both films are testaments to the beauty of Setsuko Hara, whose smile deserved it's own movie. (Actually, Late Spring kind of is that movie.)

But enough with the words. Take a look at how Ozu uses a mostly static camera with one lens to show you what happens when real love has a silent fight with time, society and death.

Song: "4am At Toumani's" from the album Mali Music by Damon Albarn and various Malian musicans.

Tokyo Story

by Ryland Walker Knight

The everyday banality distances the viewer, at first, in Yasujiro Ozu's 01953 TOKYO STORY but its purity of expression, its contemplative rhythms and its observations culminate in an ending that evokes the best of Anton Chekhov & Andre Dubus: you learn how to live. Were we all so selfless as Setsuko Hara's Norika, we (humans) would, to say it simply, be better. Norika has the highest of standards for herself but she can see virtue in what we viewers, along with Kyoko (Kyoko Kagawa), are inclined to dismiss as selfish in Shige (Haruko Sugimura); but its Shige who cries first, remember. Shukichi (Chishu Ryu) & Tomi (Chieko Higashiyama) are proud of their children in the end despite the Tokyo-bustle pre-occupations that keep Shige and Koichi (So Yamamura) busy because they are successful and there is a time when children outgrow their parents' embrace. However, this purity is at a remove from the audience by virtue of Ozu's static camera, empty frames and deliberate arrhythmia. That we can reach any emotional plateau is remarkable, nigh miraculous, and as such, it's this heart-felt and honest humanity that inspires such claims. The ascethetic framework (& a stark DVD transfer), however, can misdirect an audience into resisting how nimbly the narrative moves. This is a gentle film. And it moves great distances (albeit from one tatami mat to another (the film's opening and closing titles appear over a thatched grid akin to such floorings)) in the blink of an eye. Women cry -- and suddenly -- but it's the howl of a train and the groan of a tugboat that moved me the most as the film closed. So happy to have found this treasure at last: thank you, Dad, it's a great Christmas present. Life may be disappointing but when we can find ourselves this transported-transformed-transcended with the stuff cloudy days (not dreams) are made of, there's a light shining on the water.

01953: 136 minutes: dir. by Yasujiro Ozu: written by Ozu & Kôgo Nodo

[Thanks to Harry Tuttle and Unspoken Cinema for including me in their Contemplative Cinema Blogathon.]