Late Autumn

There is a serenity that comes over me when I watch a film like "Late Autumn", it's a film directed by Yasujiro Ozu so in that sense it already holds a special place in my heart. Ozu was a master filmmaker who made wonderful masterpieces almost all the time. His films were rarely seen outside of Japan for the longest time, but now over the years he's been rediscovered and can now be seen as one of cinema's masters.

What you should know about "Late Autumn" is it's a reworking of the ongoing theme which was prominent in many of Ozu's films, the disillusionment of the family. In this film the relationship between a daughter and her widowed mother is interrupted by the insistence that the daughter should be married. Both woman seem content with the fact they they live together, but society has made it necessary that the daughter should marry.

The mother in this film is played by one of the great beauties of cinema, Setsuko Hara. In earlier incarnations of the same plot, Ozu had Hara play the daughter, but now she is middle aged. Hara seems older, slower, but her beauty and her quiet sadness seems to be even more prominent. Hara wasn't in movies much, she soon retired after Ozu passed away, and in her late career she mostly worked almost exclusively with him. Seeing her in this film is like seeing a history between an actress and her director, it isn't only a character she's playing, but it's an embodiment of an idea instilled in her by a filmmaker.

But "Late Autumn" also has its playful side, it's a modern tragedy but with some wise human comedy in the mix. The trouble makers of the film happen to be three middle aged men who were friends of Hara's dead husband. They plan to play matchmakers for the daughter, it's almost as if the idea came to them on a whim. The tragedy here is how the mother and daughter become pawns in the games of these foolish men. No one asked them to interfere with their perfectly content life, but they have it in their mind it's for the best of both parties that the daughter be married off.

But we don't see anyone judged in "Late Autumn", there are no villains, the tragedy is mostly done organically by typical human error, we understand everyone does things with the best intentions, but change must be accepted, and we mourn for the way of life that will be lost.

"Late Autumn" is a patient film, it asks you to pay attention, for with all Ozu films, he's fascinated with the behaviours and the relationships of his characters. It's brilliant how Ozu can bring out character relationships in a cinematic way. Sometimes he emphasizes a close connection between two people by having them mirror each others movements, or sometimes it's used to show off a comedic situation.

But Ozu is also a master at showing the sadness of life, and also the joys. He shows life as a passage of time full of hope and heartaches. Perhaps no one has been able to show the beauty of loneliness better than Ozu. This is done in the final moments with Setsuko Hara where she is left alone in her room, and Ozu gives us her little moment to reflect that her daughter will no longer be there to greet her home, she is left to continue her life alone. Hara is perfect in this scene, every little movement shows volumes of what she is feeling, that's the secret of Ozu cinema, he was fascinated with the little habits people did, the slight mundane things that filled up their lives, it's what his cinema is all about, it's what make us care for these people, they seem all the more real to us. There are moments in "Late Autumn" where a touch of the wrist or a tilt of the head had more behind it than any emotional monologue could ever tell us, that's the signature of a master.