Eclipse Series 3: Late Ozu (Early Spring / Tokyo Twilight / Equinox Flower / Late Autumn / The End of Summer) (The Criterion Collection)
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Chishu Ryu, Mariko Okada, Miyuki Kuwano, Ryuji Kita, ShinichirĂ' MikamiBrand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Japanese (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, Box set, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 636 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-06-12
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion Collection
Movie Reviews of Eclipse Series 3: Late Ozu (Early Spring / Tokyo Twilight / Equinox Flower / Late Autumn / The End of Summer) (The Criterion Collection)
Movie Review: Go East and Grow Young
Summary: 5 Stars
THE SET: I've seen the complaints about less-than-pristine picture quality and the three-sided piece of paper that constitutes the "box." Look, we're being handed five rarely-seen films by Yasujiro Ozu! Complaining about the packaging or minor picture imperfections is like receiving a fortune in rare pearls and griping that they come in a paper bag and still smell faintly of sea water. Get over it.
EARLY SPRING (5 stars): This is my favorite of the lot, demonstrating what Ozu does best: it presents a clearly-stated theme, and then slowly lets "secondary" characters take over the narrative from an unexpected direction. Seemingly, this is about the gray, monotonous life of the "salaryman" in post-war Japan. It does illustrate that life, but to see this as a sort of Asian MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT is to miss the point. Ozu's films pivot on what is off-camera, or on what is NOT being acted on the faces of those on-camera. Before launching his corporate slice-of-life, Ozu reveals whom to watch from the first face we see--that of Masako (Chikage Awashima), lying on her futon, sleepless as the day dawns. Over the course of the film, we learn what her anxiety is about. We hear competing views on how to survive a failing marriage. Most viewers will long for her to dump her selfish husband, Shoji. We will see her confront him firmly, but with astonishing decorum. This, keep in mind, is in the context of a film where Shoji has roughly double the screen time of Masako. That's what you get with Ozu. The real story is often just out of frame.
TOKYO TWILIGHT (3.5 stars): Kudos to the veteran writer/director for trying to break out of his accustomed style of domestic drama. I forget who said, "The greater the success, the closer it verges on failure," but this is somehow the inverse of that. It is a failure that verges tantalizingly close to brilliance. TOKYO TWILIGHT is a movie with BIG PLOT POINTS, on a scale I do not recall seeing in any other Ozu film. The center of all the turmoil is Akiko (Ineko Arima), who is bereaved more than once, strives to pay gambling debts, is jilted, has an abortion, learns her "dead" mother is still alive, and is hit by a train. Arima's flat-footed portrayal of Akiko is what makes this worth watching, and it has close-ups of her that stayed in my mind's eye for weeks. Still, the film is testimony to the fact that in Ozu's world, the cataclysms that result from small human missteps are more interesting to watch than conventional, "big" dramatic contrivances. However skillfully done, it is the latter we find here.
EQUINOX FLOWER (5 stars): Of the five films on offer in this set, EQUINOX FLOWER and THE END OF SUMMER are the two whose pivotal characters are men. Tellingly, these two films also happen to be comedies. Wataru Hirayama (Shin Saburi) is a garrulous, masculine version of the quietly conflicted female characters played by Setsuko Hara in other Ozu films. Hirayama talks a good talk when it comes to encouraging young people to marry for love, but when it comes to his own daughter (Ineko Arima, again), he wants complete control--and sees no contradiction between his words and deeds. It is the perfect set-up for a comedy based on the interaction of those with vastly different assumptions. Ozu's comedies draw from our recognition of universal foibles, and this is one of his best. He makes us see exaggerated versions of ourselves and when we laugh, we are also quietly gaining self-awareness.
LATE AUTUMN (4.5 stars): Superficially, this is a remake of LATE SPRING, with a marriageable daughter reluctant to abandon her widowed mother, Akika (Setsuko Hara)--in the earlier film, the elder parent was a father. Still, the two works have different literary sources, and the shuffling and reshuffling of seemingly minor details is what propels the best of Ozu's work. Yoko Tsukasa, as Aya, the daughter, conveys her filial devotion and her sadness quite skillfully. However, she is not in an enviable position having to play opposite Hara, whose brilliance lies in playing both the surface and the subtext in such a way as to make us think we alone know her true mind. Ozu doesn't completely succeed in turning this "mismatch" to the film's advantage, since the actions of Aya are its lynchpin. What he does instead is pursue a strategy like that of EARLY SPRING. What seems to be a straightforward story about finding a match for a young woman becomes something much more profound--a treatise on how shared bereavement is sometimes more precious than young love.
THE END OF SUMMER (5): Only Ozu could create a delightful family comedy that ends with a shot of crows perching on gravestones. Where is Banpei Kohayagawa, the family patriarch, going when he excuses himself mid-sentence and struts happily out into the street? His family soon learns, to their great consternation, that he has resumed the same affair that had once disrupted their family when their late mother was alive. Michiyo Aratama, as Fumiko (the eldest daughter), turns in one of the great comic performances in all of Ozu. Here's a sample of dialogue. Hisao: "At this point, Father's personality isn't going to change." Fumiko: "I'll yell at him until it does!" This was Ozu's penultimate film, but in its light-hearted depiction of the natural continuum between life and death, it feels like it would have been perfect as his last word.
The late films of Ozu show the director leaning more in the direction of the needs of younger characters, and being more pliable in giving us scenes that are conventionally gratifying. He never panders in this respect, but instead holds out these moments as a loving gift. In the five films of this set, we see several successful examples of women's resistance to male-dominated values; we see a much more expansive definition of "family"; and, we get a great deal more story exposition than we may be used to. Finally, we are privileged to see two things I don't recall in any other Ozu movie: a man getting down on his knees and happily helping with the housework, and a woman, destined to marry, actually dressed in full bridal array at movie's end.
Enjoy these now. If you wait for a perfect restoration of these movies, you may never see them, and that would be tragic.
More Eclipse Series 3: Late Ozu (Early Spring / Tokyo Twilight / Equinox Flower / Late Autumn / The End of Summer) (The Criterion Collection) reviews:
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Summary of Eclipse Series 3: Late Ozu (Early Spring / Tokyo Twilight / Equinox Flower / Late Autumn / The End of Summer) (The Criterion Collection)
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