Why
I Saw This Movie:
This is the 3rd film by legendary Japanese
director Yasujiro Ozu (W) that my friend the Cinephile has gotten me to
see, following Good Morning and Late Autumn.
The
Review
As Ozu has
a highly stylized technique, much of the style of his movies is the same from
film to film. Film lovers gush over his
techniques and you can find plenty of reviews on the Internet by people more
intelligent than me.
I’m
a bit of a philistine. But I enjoyed
this film nonetheless.
Unlike
the previous Ozu film’s I’ve seen, this film had much more of a plot, which
caused me to get engaged in the story a lot more.
The
film also was a lot more bittersweet, and it was hard to be unemotional while
watching it.
Ratings :
7 out of 10 stars. (I gave the two previous Ozu films 6 stars,
but this one gets a small bump up because it has much more of a story, that
makes it more accessible to the ordinary philistine like myself.)
Links
And from my own Grand Rapids Michigan,
here’s Dave Blakeslee’s review of the film here.
Link of the Day
Chomsky: How America's Great University System Is Getting Destroyed
I saw this review of a previous Ozu film and thought you might be interested in it:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n10/michael-wood/at-the-movies
An interesting article. Thanks for the heads up.
ReplyDeleteWhat a difference a bit of plotting can make, no? Some aesthetes regard the discipline as a milksop for the intellectually lazy, but phooey on them. Getting plot to "work" is, for any narrative artist, the preeminent challenge -- including arty-farty types like DFW.
ReplyDeleteMy own personal preference is for plotting--so agreed.
ReplyDeleteHowever, to each his own. If some aesthetes prefer something more stylistic than narrative, they can feel free to enjoy film directors like Ozu.
Granted such people are definitely in the minority.
...and granted, secretly, I've never really trusted someone with tastes that are different than my own. As David Mitchell explains perfectly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg_gj2UO2tU