What We Don’t Say
A film essay by: Witney Seibold
The journey on the road of cinema, if traveled long enough, will eventually lead you to the greats. If your interest in film is deep enough, you will start to pick up names like Robert Bresson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Andrei Tarkovsky. These people are masters of the craft, and yet only seem to be known in the circles of scholars and cinephiles. Their films are challenging to say the least, and deal with the kind of adult themes that most casual film viewers find a chore: the hurtles of faith, the trials of your own sexuality, the prisons of your misanthropy, the crushing horror of your unforgotten memories. And in addition to addressing macroscopic topics, their utilization of the cinematic craft is second to none. These are artists who have truly discovered new ways to tell a story, to present images, to employ a stark and stellar realism, to exploit the cinematic form to its fullest potential. They are bold experimenters, and unconventional thinkers.
Like I said in my “Citizen Kane” essay, it’s easy to watch a good movie, but it’s kind of threatening to sit and watch The Best Film Ever Made.
Which is why so few casual film watchers are unfamiliar with the name Yasujiro Ozu, and why so many scholars and cinephiles pronounce his name in hushed tones. Ozu is certainly one of cinema’s finest filmmakers.
Giving a brief description of Ozu’s films to friends makes him sound bland and unimpressive: First of all, he uses a “realist” style, which is tough for the melodrama fan. He makes films about families, how they don’t talk to each other, and how they are silently drifting apart. There are rarely confrontations in his films, and the conversations are natural and undramatic. The people in it experience grief, inconsideration, selfishness, and tragedy, all without saying a word, or talking about anything directly important. They are stories about what we do not say to one another.
The problem with stories about what we do not say to one another is that they must, by necessity, posses no action or dramatic confrontations. We climax-junky modern-day westerners have a lot of trouble with that. If we think of a film whose important emotional moments are never spoken or shown, we balk. And if we think “family drama” we usually either jump straight to the lurid grossness of the soap opera, or the dark and horrible suicide-laden plots of an old Russian novel we hated to read in high school. The thing about Ozu’s films, though, is if you slow down a little, watch them quietly and restfully, meditate on the shots he is very, very deliberately showing you, you enter a strange meditative place, you begin to sense all the pain under the surface, you see the humor and the telltale behaviors that reveal the characters’ true intentions. And by then end, you are weeping for everything that hasn’t been said.
Yasujiro Ozu, born in Tokyo in 1903, has directed a total of 54 films, early omn, cranking out as many as six a year. He made his first film in 1927, but it wasn’t until 1932, 22 films later, that he made the semi-autobiographical film “I Was Born, But…,” and started to catch the eyes of cineastes and Americans. His early films have a quicker pace, and a more sensational approach to their stories, but the Ozu stamp was slowly growing.
It wasn’t until 1953, though, that Ozu was to make his masterpiece, “Tokyo Story.” “Tokyo Story” contained all of the Ozu’s usual familial and post-war interests, but was the first to make his craft so clear and beautiful.
“Tokyo Story” is about an elderly couple Shukishi and Tomi (Ozu regular Chishu Ryu and his cheerful chubby wife played by Chieko Higashiyama) who leave their rural home to visit their adult children in the bustling madness of post-war Tokyo. Their son, Koichi (So Yamamura) is a doctor, and has a put-upon wife (Kuniko Miyake), and two young sons. Their daughter, Shige (Haruko Sugimura), is persnickety and runs a beauty parlor. They have another son who died in the war, and also visit with his widow, Noriko (Japan’s great star Setsuko Hara).
The two children see their parents less as welcomed visitors, and more as scheduling conflicts. They are very busy people, and can think of nothing to say to or do with their parents. They introduce their children, but they run away. Shukishi and Tomi smile through all of this, making quiet excuses for their children’s poor behavior (“This must be what it’s like to live in Tokyo.” “Oh I guess he’s just afraid.”). The children think to send their parents to a spa for a few days, less as something they would enjoy, and more as an activity to get them out of the way. In one scene, Koichi brings home some cakes for his parents. Shige looks at them, and remarks that they are far too expensive for elderly people, and the two of them continue their conversation, casually eating the cakes themselves.
I’ve seen this dynamic in family gatherings and out-of-town visits before. The people reunite, and don’t talk about anything of importance, but go on a frantic race to stave off boredom.
During their visits with Noriko, they are treated humbly and civilly for the only time during their visit. At one quiet moment, the elderly couple is sitting alone. “Let’s go home” they say.
They return home. Tomi dies unexpectedly.
The children all gather at their parents’ home for the funeral. The family dynamic, though, stays the same, and the old family confrontations are never honestly revealed.
Why all this obsession with the family unit? It may be a clue to include the facts that Ozu never married himself, and lived with his mother until her death.
There are no “gimmies” in “Tokyo Story.” No musical indicators, no explosive monologues, no dramatic arguments or grand reveals to dictate how the audience is supposed to feel. We instead get the family dynamic from the family itself. We sit in square rooms with them, see their frustration, feel the frantic Sisyphean workaday struggle of modern city life, we feel the shame in not being able to relate to our own family, the frustration of closely guarded emotion, and the crushing inescapable prison of polite society. By the time the funeral occurs, we know all of the characters intimately, their complicated relationships, and we know exactly what needs to be said, and exactly why none of them can or will say it.
Ozu’s films make you feel like you are staying in as a guest in the house of someone you don’t know too well. You are o.k. with being sheltered, but you feel a little awkward about making yourself too comfortable. You observe your hosts, and may recognize awkwardness or animosity between them, but you are far too polite to bring such things to the fore.
Polite society:
Much of “Tokyo Story” depends on the tenets of polite Japanese society in the 1950s. Just like in post-war America, post-war Japan was a time of rebuilding, and of economic plenty. People moved to big cities and the job market was booming. The entire country was still smarting from major losses (although Japan’s losses were far more overwhelming than America’s), but doing a good job of ignoring the unpleasantness and getting boldly back on its feet.
America in the 1950s is notorious for its clean-cut all-white politeness. All non-confornity was frowned upon, and idyllic suburban life became popular culture’s heaven. This heaven was not allowed any violent emotions or cracks in the façade. Every comment had to be filtered through the popular idea of the polite family. This is an oversimplified version of the time I know (I was not alive in the 1950s), but it is what I have gleaned from my parents, and from films and literature from the time.
Japan had a similar fantasy of idyllic urban life. People working hard for the good of the country, treating people with quiet respect and dignity, and caring after their familial legacies with deft aplomb. I know it’s a stereotype to call Japanese people “quiet and polite,” but watching “Tokyo Story,” you see the crushing social importance of remaining quiet and polite, even to your family, even during funerals, even to strangers, even to everyone all the time.
So what do we do when important family details need to be discussed, or we need to reveal our deep emotions to the people closest to us? Well, it’s rude to put others in so awkward a position. In most melodramas, we get a cathartic moment where the characters are finally able to strip themselves of all bounds, and shout how they actually feel. In real life, though, and especially in polite society, those catharses never come. We often choose to leave our masks on for the sake of smoothness and continued relations.
There’s a lot we want to say, but there’s more we don’t say. “Tokyo Story” screams everything at us everything we don’t say.
Chishu Ryu’s performance is truly amazing, that he is able to express just how disappointed he is, just how depressed and torn he is, all while wearing a small quiet smile, and not saying anything out of turn.
The Craft:
I’ve talked about Ozu’s technical craft, so let me tell you what it entails, in order to give you a better framework where to place this story.
The first thing one may notice about Ozu’s films is that the camera never moves. In “Tokyo Story,” I think there are only two tracking shots, no pans, and no zooms. All the rest are entirely static. We’re forced to look at the characters and the single room they sit in. We are not distracted by flourishes.
Ozu is famous for what is often called “tatami view” angles. That is, if the characters are sitting, he brings the camera’s point of view down a few feet, so we’re sitting at eye level with the actors, as if we’re sitting on a tatami mat in a typical Tokyo home. It’s a relaxing technique, and makes me feel more comfortable as the usual standing-angle cameras employed in most films. If characters sit in Western film, the camera will tilt or pan down with them. Ozu lets the camera sit down, and has the characters fill the frame.
Ozu frames all his shots very deliberately, almost like Kubrick. All the interior shots are carefully framed by windows, doorways, proscenia, sliding screens. All the shots are almost like stage compositions. Every teapot, every background banner (mostly hand painted by Ozu himself), every tatami mat and robe and widow is all deliberately place within the frame. He is showing typical Japanese urban life, but he is also composing meticulous photographs.
(A note on the banners: I am not fluent in Japanese, but I have studied it a minute amount – I did recently finish an 1100-page Japanese imperial epic – and I am familiar with the importance of calligraphy in Japan. A letter in the Japanese language has several meanings. A letter is a piece of visual art, a word, a pun, and a name all at once. The banners you see in Ozu films are never incidental)
Another quirk Ozu is known for is his use of what critic Roger Ebert (an enormous Ozu fan) calls “pillow shots.” In Japanese poetry, there is a common practice of using “pillow words;” extra words to pad out the line, make the meter work, or just to add a single evocative image. Ozu will occasionally pad his film with a shot of a skyline, a rooftop, a field, a train or boat drifting slowly in the background. Sometimes we see a room a few moments before someone enters, or remain in it a moment after they have left. These are not establishing shots to tell us where the action is to take place, but mere quiet meditations of the world around the central action. The character of the world and the quiet and warm atmosphere of the air is just as important to the characters’ emotional states of being than the action and dialogue. It’s these “pillow shots” that allow us to more easily imbibe the film. Ozu is asking us to stop. To look. To slow down. The shots are beautiful. We sit and absorb the beauty, and then move to the next scene. By doing so, we can appreciate the rhythms he wants us to.
One defense of a slow-moving film that critics have is the word “deliberate.” “Deliberate” is too often a euphemism for “a mind-crushingly dull pace.” However, I must earnestly use the word “deliberate” for Ozu. He really is deliberately slowing us down. Really asking us to meditate rather than thrill. By the time we have reached the tragic end of “Tokyo Story” we are still in tears, because Ozu has perfectly led us down the correct path.
“Tokyo Story” is the only Yasujiro Ozu film I have on my best-of list. But this is not to say it is the only Ozu film that is worthwhile. Just as powerful and impressive are “Late Spring,” “Floating Weeds,” “Early Summer,” and “Good Morning.” “I Was Born, But…” is also a masterpiece. He made his last film in 1962, and died the following year of cancer.
Each of these films indeed warrant their own essays, but if I were to write an extended piece on any of them, they would likely sound very similar to the one above. Ozu’s films all have the same mastery of craft, and similar themes of the trap of polite Japanese society, and the downfall of the family unit in post-war Japan. They are all brilliant in the same way. If you liked “Tokyo Story,” by all means, try any of these others. If you liked those, well, Ozu directed over 50 films.
For most average filmgoers or scasual observers, Ozu’s films will take a level of patience that one is rarely prepared to give to a film. If you are a budding cinephile, it would behoove you to become familiar with his work, but if not, I think his films are most certainly worth the effort.
Meditate. Allow yourself to slow down, and let one of the most brilliant uses of film become familiar to you.
I love Ozu, and, to be honest it took me a while to get there. It was after years of viewing films and studying craft in classes that I came to appreciate what he was doing. Literary critic Harold Bloom once pointed out that the best pleasures one can achieve from reading are the difficult ones; if you read a typical and unchallenging novel, you may be moved, but not changed. If you want to experience something truly amazing and moving, reach for the book you will have trouble getting through. By the end, the experience will have changed you, and you will be ready to take on something even more wonderful.
Ozu, I dare say, is the cinematic equivalent of this idea. The films are a challenge, but if you make it to the end of an Ozu film, you will have been to a new plane of cinematic art and emotional expression. Will you like it? Maybe. But it’s certainly worth a try.
