No Nonsense November #6

1959 was such a bizarre and wonderful year for Ozu. Having fulfilled his Shochiku contract with for the year Good Morning, he went on to make Floating Weeds for Daiei. This saw him partially separating from his usual crew, resulting in a temporary collaboration with, amongst others, Kazuo Miyagawa! The photography is stunning. But it is a departure in other ways. We temporarily step away from the middle class concerns of the marriage films to focus on a troupe of poor kabuki actors. We move away from Tokyo to a seaside town on the inland sea.

I love the village by the sea. And I love the shots of boats. I love that joyful, wistful theme.…

It is such a privilege to view the films of Ozu. He has invented a filmmaking style entirely unique to his films. It takes a few minutes to adjust to the visual style, as the head-on conversations can be jarring, yet once absorbed it tends to be quite meditative. While his characters can be stiff at times, they reveal great depth of emotion.

This was the most intense of his films I’ve seen. Autumn Afternoon and Tokyo Story are much more reflective, whereas Floating Weeds has a lot of anger and resentment boiling up between the cracks. The intergenerational relationships are something Ozu captures especially well, often showing characters trying to connect but failing to give what the other wants. The setting…

Similarly to A Story of Floating Weeds, Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu's popular 1934 silent film, this remake features a group of actors who come to a coastal village to perform traditional drama and strive for success. Through its initial fifteen minutes, the audience is made to feel disoriented by Ozu's approach of transitioning between a variety of characters without settling on any one character as the main protagonist. It follows a group of kabuki performers who cause a stir as they arrive in a seaside village. Through the introduction of Komajuro (Nakamura Ganjirō II), we are able to see how he must confront his past involving his ex-lover, Oyoshi (Haruko Sugimura), and his son, Kiyoshi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi).

Ozu employs inventive…

Ozu Took his time embracing cinematic advances but when he Finally turned to color his use of it was perfection. - Michael Rowin.

The above quote sums it all up, when it comes to Ozu color films. A lot of the elements that make up a shot in his films are something that a lot of directors would take for granted. There's a shop in this film where the windows are made up of alternating red and blue squares of glass. The colors not only jump off the screen but you're drawn to them. They're beautiful. When he revisits it at night there's a red Japanese sign behind it lit up that shines through. You're mesmerized by these colors.

It…

"Ervas Flutuantes" narra a trajetória de uma trupe itinerante de teatro kabuki que, ao percorrer diversas regiões do Japão, decide fazer uma parada em uma isolada vila de pescadores. No centro da narrativa está Komajuro, um ator já envelhecido que participou da fundação do grupo e carrega consigo o peso de uma vida marcada pela estrada. Ao chegar ao local, ele passa a frequentar diariamente o estabelecimento de Oyoshi, uma antiga companheira, proprietária de um pequeno bar de saquê. Dessa relação passada nasceu Kiyoshi, um jovem recém-formado que agora trabalha nos correios da vila. Como Komajuro sempre viveu em constante deslocamento, sua presença na vida do filho foi rara e irregular, o que levou ele e Oyoshi a ocultarem a…

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Picked by: BrunoLD, Michael’s Cinema Paradiso, and Kosta Jovanović.

Floating Weeds is at times a comparably light and funny Ozu film, but like so many it is about change and a part of life coming to an end. Floating Weeds is about a non-traditional life, without security or stability, and people trying to forge a family after the right time has passed. The film is about a stubborn father, insecure about his status, and wanting more for his son. But his deceitful ways are unhelpful. Truth helps provide peace and understanding, lies hurts everyone. This is a film of outdated, traditional stage plays and a movement into a more modern real world performance.

Floating Weeds is filled…

I’m still in my Ozu discovery phase. This is my fifth film of his. I can see that one of the most common themes found in Yasujirō Ozu’s work is the generational divide between parents and children. This is often viewed through the lens of encroaching western modernization. For example, the tragedy of his most acclaimed film, Tokyo Story, involves an aging couple whose grown children no longer look after them because of their busy, modern lives. In that film, it’s the children who are preoccupied and selfish. Not out of malice, it’s just that they can’t be bothered. They have their own families, jobs, interests, distractions. Traditional Japanese family values seem to be dying. Times are changing. Change is…