Saturday, December 22, 2007
Ozu's Early Spring: Sugi and the Goldfish
It would be an almost criminal offense to simply summarize
Yasujiro Ozu's film Early Spring (1956) as being a story of Sugiyama a postwar Japanese salaried worker who has an affair. I have only seen Early Spring and Tokyo Story but I so far feel that Ozu's films are very much journeys, trips into a world that observes aspects of the human condition.
The journey of Early Spring is framed at both beginning and end with trains. The first a modern commuter train, one who brings a third of a million people into the business sector of Tokyo every day. The ones at the end are prewar steam trains in Mitsuishi a rural mountain industrial area for the Iowa Fire Brick Factory, protagonist Sugiyama's employer.
Early Spring's structure is a musical one where each sequence is usually begun with a well framed environmetal and where there is some often some kind of sound underlying each interaction with the characters: street noises, typewriters, the clatter of Mah Jong pieces.
Eny and jealousy fill the dialog of the characters. Salaried workers envy the self employed and visa versa, Sugi's wife, unable to get out of her own head, envies the status of other women she encounters and is naturally and reflexively jealous of her husband's actions, The motivation of Suji's meddling neighbors into his affairs has to some degree jealousy at the source of their motivation. And isn't the motivation of an affair the desire and envy to see if grass is greener on the other side?
Sujiyama's affair within the first third of the film with Goldfish (a nicknamed derived by the other neighbors and commuting workers because of her big eyes, affectionate manner and because they say she is best seen from afar), is quick and mechanical but is central to the rest of the film It flirtation on a Sunday hike with the other commuter/neighbors, is followed up by a lunch, a later Goldfish's seduction in a traditional paper walled roomed restaurant first terminated by Sugi's pressing the buzzer to page the waitress, but consumated quickly later at what looks to be a no-tell hotel. Goldfish and Masako, Sugi's wife, are not weak pushover characters.
Seasons and life's dreams in this film, as in life, are ephemeral. Miuri, a former fellow of Sujis who is dying of a terminal disease fell ill in early May and he has been sick for 100 days. Sujiyama and his wife have lost a son and have yet found their next season together. Sugi is no longer young. The discussion under the bridge with a father figure about his mistake and moving forward with a team of rowers, youth passing by just prior to his departure to Mitsuishi. Masako follows Sugi where they mutually and openly apologize to one another. Will life for Sujiyama and Masuko be an empty dream as it was for the soon to be retired salary man drinker in the bar near the film? There is a sense of renewal and hope one feels for them as they watch the trains which betrays such a path for their future.
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:29 PM
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