Late Spring

Yasujiro Ozu's "Late Spring" ranks as one of the great director's masterpieces, to me it has become as familiar as an old shoe. I no longer turn on "Late Spring" to look for intricacies of the plot, although there is always something I find surprising about it. I now watch it as a form of comfort, as I do with practically every Ozu film. There is something always soothing about his movies, even the sad ones, they deal with life in a way that isn't devastating, but only as something that is. Ozu's films have to do very much with the passage of time, how things exist in the present, but are soon gone.

"Late Spring" is one of the many films Ozu made about a daughter who must marry, and how her leaving effects the family. In this case, the family only consists of the widowed father, who coaxes her into marrying for fear that she may end up alone. The daughter on the other hand prefers life with her father, but he knows he won't be around forever.

Of all the films Ozu made about a girl being married off, thus leaving her family, "Late Spring" remains the great director's most poignant, even more so as the actors playing the father and daughter are Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara. These two stars made a name for themselves particularly in Ozu's films, and they would often play a father daughter.

Hara plays Noriko, a young woman who is 27 year old single woman, at her age, she is considered to be getting on in years and is encouraged to find a husband before she becomes an old maid. However, she is content with life, she enjoys looking after he father and being there for him. The father also seems content with this, the thought of marrying her off doesn't even occur to him, until it is suggested by Noriko's Aunt. The Aunt soon finds a prospect for Noriko, he's a man we never see in the film, but is described as resembling Gary Cooper. Ozu never makes this film about the man or the impending marriage, this is a story about a father and daughter having to give up their life because society demands it.

Had no one interfered with their lives, the father and Noriko probably would've continued living their own way. This is really a tragedy seeing this happen, but as Ozu reminds us, this is the way life is. In the final speech delivered by the father to the daughter, he talks about marriage not being about happiness, but about finding your own happiness within it. The speech is not a ringing endorsement about marriage, it culminates with him talking about when he married Noriko's mother, and she spent their wedding night in tears. However the point is clear, life is about change, and we must accept it.

Watching "Late Spring" again, I saw something I hadn't even noticed before, or at least something that hadn't even occurred to me. It's in the way Ozu films an empty space, which wasn't a new idea for him. There's something quietly moving about how he shows a person fill a space and then exit, he leaves the camera on the empty space once they are gone, as if you're almost expecting something to come along and fill this void. One such instance comes when Noriko is sitting by a mirror by herself, she is happy flipping what looks to be a cloth on her hand, talking to her father and a friend of his. Suddenly for no apparent reason, she gets up and leaves, suddenly the space she occupied is left empty, and soon everywhere the father looks in his house will be nothing but empty space.

The final image of the father is among Ozu's saddest shots he ever filmed, which makes it one of the saddest shots in the history of cinema, it is of the father after marrying off his daughter, alone in his house peeling an apple. When he finishes the peel, a look of great sadness comes over him as he is will fill the remainder of his life alone.

Like "Tokyo Story", "Late Spring" is a film about life, and because it is about life it isn't all sadness, but about joy, humour, compassion, and humanity. The reason I love Ozu is because his characters are so human, I turn them on because they are like friends, and you see their lives unfold in front of you. Ozu cares deeply for these characters and these situations, they're problems may sound trivial, but in Ozu's hands they become universal and transcendent.

I have yet to see another director like Ozu who can make the mundane seem so poetic, or can turn the smallest situation into such an important film, I said it before and I'll say it again, to see his films, is to see life unfold in front of you.