Film Review
Change and decay in all around I see... Yasujirô Ozu ended
his remarkable filmmaking career on a suitably sombre note with a film
of rare depth and emotional power. In
An Autumn Afternoon, Ozu's 54th and
final film, the director collates the various themes that underpin most
of his work and from these he fashions both an exquisitely moving
statement on the trauma of growing old and a wry commentary on the
modernising trends that were reshaping Japanese culture and society at
the start of the 1960s. For a director whose work has an almost
unparalleled artistry and resonance it is hard to judge one film in
relation to another, but this final masterful flourish must surely rate
as one of his finest achievements - the perfect conclusion to his
uniquely perceptive oeuvre.
An Autumn Afternoon may look
like a flawless piece of cinema but it was not an easy film to
make. When he began working on the film, Ozu's health was rapidly
deteriorating, his physical decline hastened by his uncontrollable
addiction to alcohol and nicotine. He was only part way
through the script when he suffered an immense personal blow - the
mother he had lived with almost all his life and to whom he was
devotedly attached died at the age of 86. To add to these
personal difficulties, Japanese cinema was in massive decline, losing
ground to the latest form of mass entertainment, television, leading to
a huge shake-up in the country's biggest film studios. Just over
a year after the film's release, Ozu would be dead, struck down by
cancer on his 60th birthday. Ozu did not intend that this would
be his final film, indeed he had already begun work on another film in
the months preceding his death, but when you watch it you feel he must
have known, instinctively, this was the end. He seems to pour
just about everything he had left into it, his final gift to humanity
before he shuffled off to that great Ginza bar in the sky.
The film's Japanese title,
Sanma no
aji, translates as 'The Taste of Mackerel Pike', a mackerel pike
being a fish most often eaten by ordinary people and which is best
enjoyed in the autumn. This title is both an affirmation of Ozu's
interest in the everyday lives of ordinary people and an assertion that
some of life's bitter experiences are most acutely felt in the autumn
of middle-age. The
shomin-geki
or 'home drama' was the mainstay of Ozu's body of work, a popular genre
that allowed him to explore his favourite themes and thereby develop a
deeper understanding of the human psyche, which seemed to be his main
goal in life. The family, with its inter-generational conflicts
and contrasts in behaviour between young and old, was the ideal setting
for this purpose.
In
An Autumn Afternoon, Ozu
once again uses the plot device of a daughter being manoeuvred into
marrying against her will, torn from the widowed parent to whom she is
devoted. The plot may resemble that of Ozu's previous films
Late Spring (1949) and
Late Autumn (1960), but the
approach and viewpoint are very different. Here, Ozu's focus is
on the ageing father, Hirayama, played to perfection by his most
treasured actor Chishû Ryû. Ryû appeared in all
but a few of Ozu's films, most often in modest supporting roles.
In
An Autumn Afternoon he
plays the patriarch, the role Ozu had previously given him in
There Was a Father (1942),
Late Spring,
Early Summer (1951) and
Tokyo Story (1953). It is
interesting to see how Ryû's portrayal of the head of the
household gently develops across this span of films, reflecting changes
in Japanese society in the decades following WWII. Before the
war, the patriarch was someone whose authority could never be
challenged and who expected (and got) unquestioning obedience from his
wife and children. In his later films, Ozu depicts the patriarch
almost as a figure of fun, dominated by his wife, ignored by his
children, dividing his time between the drudgery of office work and
recurring bouts of alcohol-assisted nostalgia.
The patriarch of
An Autumn Afternoon
may not be the object of ridicule that we see in previous Ozu films but
he is a pathetic sort, bossed about by his daughter, mocked by his sons
and yet fearing the day when his children will leave him so that he
must end his days in abject solitude. It is tempting to read
Ryû's poignant portrayal as a self-portrait of the director,
particularly as Ozu himself was, at the time, coming to terms with the
prospect of a lonely future without a life companion after the death of
his mother. The main character Hirayama seems increasingly out of
place in this modern world and he is often seen retreating into the
past, replaying memories of his youth - in the company of old school
chums, with the odd war-time comrade-in-arms he may run into, or by
himself. The future offers him nothing - just an empty house
inhabited only by shadows and fading recollections of the past.
The gulf between the generations grows progressively from one Ozu film
to the next, and here it is at its widest. Hirayama and his
children are so far apart they might as well be complete
strangers. The oldest son Koichi and his wife Akiko (enjoyably
portrayed by Keiji Sada and Mariko Okada) are unmistakably children of
the consumer revolution. They have thrown off the shackles of
parental control but still depend on money from their father to pay for
all the goodies which they cannot do without, necessities such as
refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, golf clubs and expensive designer
handbags. Hirayama's daughter Michiko is just as independently
minded, dressing in modern clothes and refusing to cook for her father
or younger brother if they dare to come home late.
Hirayama is a stranger in his own home, yet he accepts all the changes
that come his way with a Zen-like serenity - a child without deference
is better than no child at all. When Hirayama finally finds
himself alone after his daughter's wedding, the pain he projects is
almost unbearable. The film's vibrant colour photography and
jaunty score (which appears to have been lifted from a Fellini comedy)
are diametrically opposed to the intense feelings of melancholia and
loss that we feel as we watch the film. The forced mood of
jollity merely aggravates the terrible poignancy of that final moment
when the father ends up at the place he most fears to be, separated
both physically and emotionally from the one who is dearest to
him. The fact that we do not see the wedding (one of Ozu's
customary ellipses) lends further tragedy to this unavoidable
outcome. We see the preparation - the father consoling his
daughter - and the aftermath - the father drowning his sorrows in
alcohol - but the wedding is kept from us, as if it were a tedious
formality of no real interest. The film ends where it must, with
an ageing father contemplating a lonely future, and it is here that the
tears are unstoppable. "We are alone in life," Ozu quietly
observes. "Always alone..." Fade to black.
© James Travers 2013
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Yasujirô Ozu film:
A Straightforward Boy (1929)
Film Synopsis
Shuhei Hirayama is a comfortably off widower in his late fifties who
lives in the suburbs of Tokyo with his grown up son Kazuo and daughter
Michiko. His older son Koichi has left home and lives in a modest
apartment with his young wife Akiko. Hirayama's main pleasure in
life is his frequent drinking reunions with his former school friends,
Kawai, Horie and Sugai. To one such reunion the friends invite an
old schoolmaster, Sakuma, who, they soon discover, now runs a
down-at-heel restaurant in a poor district of town with his
daughter. When Hirayama sees Sakuma's daughter, an embittered old
maid who has devoted her life to her father, he becomes anxious for his
own daughter and decides that she must marry before it is too
late. It so happens that Michiko has developed an interest in one
of Koichi's colleagues, Miura. Unfortunately, believing that
Michiko is not the marrying kind, Miura has become engaged to another
young woman. Hirayama persuades his daughter to agree to an
arranged marriage and his friend Kawai provides a suitable husband for
her. After the wedding, Hirayama finds himself bitterly alone...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.