Good Morning (1959)
Directed by Yasujirô Ozu

Film Review

The immutability of human nature, the idea that human beings will always play out the same patterns of behaviour irrespective of their social circumstances and historic context, is amply demonstrated across the three decades of films made by the Japanese film director Yasujirô Ozu.  As a filmmaker, Ozu is fairly unique in that throughout his career he devoted most of his time to making one kind of film, the 'home drama' in which he explored such universal themes as conflict between the generations and the decline of patriarchal authority.  The notion that human beings are incapable of changing from one generation to the next is supported by a comparison of Ozu's early films with his later masterworks.  In the case of I Was Born, But... (1932), this is particularly easy as Ozu reworked it many years later as Good Morning.

On the face of it, these two films could hardly be more different.  Made at the height of the Great Depression, I Was Born, But... is one of Ozu's bleaker films, dealing with a theme that was very dear to his heart: a father's inability to live up to the expectations of his son.  The film has some lighter moments but it is a poignant and graphic account of the generational divide that lies at the heart of many of Ozu's films.  Made 27 years later, Good Morning, is, by contrast, a fully fledged, commercially oriented comedy, released at a time when Japan was coasting along on a consumer boom.  Ozu's second film to be made in colour, it is a relentlessly cheerful romp that pokes fun at suburban living, in a way that often resembles a parody of an American sitcom of this era.

Good Morning is often referred to as a remake of I Was Born, But..., although the connection between the two films is tenuous and there are more differences between them than similarities.  What they have in common is that they show us the world from the perspective of two young boys who, having grown disgusted with adult behaviour, embark on a bizarre act of rebellion.  In the earlier film, two boys go on hunger strike to protest against their father's willingness to kowtow to his boss.  In the later film, the boys take a vow of silence when their parents refuse to buy them a television set, and also to demonstrate their contempt for the kind of inane, meaningless conversation that adults indulge in.  By making the boys the focus of the narrative and showing us things from their point of view, Ozu compels us to take their side and see just how ridiculous adults are, when examined from a child's perspective.

Although Ozu had been a late convert to both sound and colour, these technical innovations made it much easier for him to present a child's eye view of the world.  Compared with the restrained palette of his first colour film, Equinox Flower (1958), Good Morning has the look of a children's playroom, with vibrant primary colours liberally used to comically depict Japan's submission to western-style consumerism.  The garish colour schemes of the living quarters, interior and exterior, are more redolent of a child's storybook than Tokyo suburbia, and any notion of traditional Japanese restraint when it comes to clothing or home furnishings is conspicuous by its absence.  Now that poverty and wartime self-sacrifice have become a thing of the past, the characters that inhabit this colourful toy town have to invent new forms of crisis, such as the mystery of who misappropriated the funds of a wives' club, a small drama that rapidly escalates into an Agatha Christie-style whodunit.

The absurdity of the adult protagonists is emphasised by the way in which Ozu forces us to side with the two main child characters, Minoru and Isamu, admirably played by Kôji Shitara and Masahiko Shimazu.  Ozu's talent for getting superb performances from child actors is well-known but here he surpasses himself.   The seven-year-old Shimazu comes dangerously close to stealing the film as the younger brother who becomes a willing accomplice in his older sibling's act of defiance.  As in I Was Born, But..., it is the close rapport between the two brothers and their comical interaction that provides the film with much of its humour and humanity.  A rational mind would judge them to be selfish, vulgar and ill-mannered; Ozu portrays them as unfortunate victims of selfish, vulgar and ill-mannered society.  How can their parents be so heartless to deny them that absolute necessity of modern life: television!

Ozu's portrayal of late 1950s suburban living is humorous but also pretty damning.  In this age of female empowerment, the men have become almost invisible, quietly reflecting in the background on their own private concerns, such as coping with job insecurity and how to make provision for a bearable retirement.  Meanwhile, their far from demure wives gossip and bicker endlessly among themselves, a never-ending chorus of affable petty-mindedness.  A young couple are ostracised for being overtly modern and daring to own a television set.  One fastidious housewife threatens to banish her elderly mother to Mount  Narayama to punish her for her forgetfulness.  And when one member of the community is suspected of stealing money from the wives' club fund, recriminations start flying like flame-tipped arrows.  With their mothers preoccupied with neighbourhood intrigue and their fathers reduced to impotent, voiceless onlookers, the children of this happy little community (all boys, bizarrely) do pretty much what they please, bunking off lessons and measuring their worth by who can fart with the least effort.  (The unfortunate little boy who cannot break wind without soiling his underpants becomes an object of ridicule.)  These three worlds (that of the wives, husbands and children) exist side-by-side, seemingly unconnected and almost oblivious to one another.   

Communication, or rather the lack of it, is at the heart of Good Morning - a theme that is central to much of Ozu's work.  Not only do we have the familiar intergenerational divide, with parents singularly incapable of understanding their children, and vice versa, husbands and wives find it just as hard to communicate with one another.  Most tragic of all is the case of a young man and woman (Minoru and Isamu's English teacher and aunt) who, despite being obviously attracted to one another, are incapable of finding the words to express the fact.  Instead of saying what they mean or anything of any tangible value, the adult protagonists resort to a kind of verbal musac that says absolutely nothing and obscures all true feeling (hence the film's title). 

It takes a child's mind to see the vacuity of such pointless exchanges, but, as the child protagonists soon discover, the world simply cannot function without meaningless banter.  The adults are right to mistrust the television, not because it might create a generation of docile, pot-bellied idiots, but because it threatens to supplant the one vital ingredient on which an ordered human society depends for its very existence: idle chatter.  In 1959, Ozu may have had a point, but fifty years on it is obvious that such fears were ill-founded.  Television may have had its day, but thanks to Twitter and all the other social media time-wasting innovations that came with the dawn of the new millennium, we have been spared this terrifying prospect of a world dominated by critical thought and meaningful conversation.  Like all those other bodily functions we'd rather not talk about, crass verbal excretions are here to stay.  Good morning!

Film Synopsis

Minoru and Isamu are two young brothers who live in a close-knit community in the suburbs of Tokyo.  Their mother, Mrs Hayashi, the chairwoman of a wives' club, has fallen out with a neighbour, Mrs Haraguchi, by starting a rumour that the latter embezzled money from the club's funds to buy herself a washing machine.  Even though the matter is soon resolved, Mrs Haraguchi still harbours a grudge and starts spreading counter-rumours about Mrs Hayashi.  Meanwhile, Minoru and Isamu have taken to skipping their English lessons so that they can watch Sumo wrestling on a television set belonging to their next-door neighbours, a modern young couple who have yet to be accepted into the community.  When she hears of this, Mrs Hayashi is outraged and forbids her sons from watching their neighbours' television again.  When Minoru and Isamu fail to persuade their parents to buy them a television set they agree that they will never talk again.  The boys' vow of silence not only gets them into trouble at school it also worsens the already strained relations between Mrs Hayashi and her neighbours...