"Equinox Flower"

I did not mean to give the impression in a previous post that I am inimically opposed to spectacular blockbuster motion pictures. I treasure those moments that only the wide screen and a large vision can give: the ship seeming to move on top of the dunes in Lawrence of Arabia, the star child looking at the Earth in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the lighting of the beacon fires in The Return of the King. The problem occurs when people think that such moments are all movies can (or should) give us, and the cinema's smaller pleasures and insights are forgotten.

I've mentioned Criterion Films a couple of times before in this blog, and I've just started to sample the third volume of their Eclipse Line of no-frills releases, The Late Ozu. I've seen several of these films before: I'd even subscribed to an Internet dvd rental place called Nicheflix to borrow copies of Ozu's films that had not been released here to play on my region-free dvd player.

The movie I chose was Ozu's first color film, Equinox Flower. Ozu was like Charlie Chaplin in that he did not take to technological advances like sound films easily, but once he did, he proved to be a master of them. The film's plot is simply told: a father eventually agrees go along with his daughter's decision to marry for love and not participate in an arranged marriage.

But what moments unfold on the way.

In general, Ozu's camera was locked low to the ground, particularly in interior scenes, at about waist-high for someone who would be seated in the traditional Japanese manner. His actors often look directly at the person they're talking to. Here's a still from Equinox Flower that illustrates this:

Also, Ozu always cuts between shots and scenes: no dissolves, fades, wipes, etc. This can make for some abrupt transitions at first, but viewers soon get used to them. More famous are what became known as Ozu's "pillow shots." These at first seem to be the equivalent of establishing shots: an exterior location that characters are approaching or will arrive at--like the heads at Mt. Rushmore in North by Northwest. But in Ozu they take on a spatial symbolism and a rhythmic importance: the angularity and straight lines of buildings; the curves and sinuosity of landscapes. Here's another example from the film:

The magic that occurs in an Ozu movie is when we realize the emotional importance in a scene that simply shows a woman walk quickly down a corridor in her house, turn abruptly around, and sit down. She is deliriously joyous, and if you told that to someone who had not seen what led up to that scene, she would think you were delirious. Similarly, the same character just gently drumming her fingers on a table to traditional Japanese music on a radio. She radiates happiness. This is the other magic of movies: that we can see into one another's souls for a time, and share in the events and emotions of ordinary lives.

What is even more wonderful is that Ozu so effortlessly communicates all this across cultures. I'm not all that familiar with Japanese culture, but I understand these characters. fully, deeply, even madly. I love movies when they make the adrenaline flow and the jaw drop, but I also love those that make my heart and my eyes fill.