Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Ozu's Equinox Flower: The Kids are Alright
There is a storm warning at the train station at the beginning of Equinox Flower where two station maintanance workers chat about the physical charactaristics of arriving brides. The storm depicted in this film is generational. Hirayama, the executive director of Daiwa Trading is able to see that young people must make choices for their mates vs. the tradition of arranged marriage. In the early stages of the film he gives a speech at a wedding for the daughter of a colleague about couples coming together through infatuation and affection vs. the arranged marriage of his era. He says he envies their opportunity at this current time and age. He later is able to freely give advice to the daughter of a family acquaintance
But it is a different story at home. He has a very hard time when his own daughter is concerned. And this is the center of the personal journey of this Ozu film. He even seems to admire the decisions that young people are able to make, but can't make that change for himself in the case of his oldest daughter Setsuko. At the one third point of the film, Taniguchi a young salaried worker comes in with a request for permission to marry Setsuko, the tempest has arrived in full.
Setsuko's question: "Can't I find my own happiness?" is a key one. Hirayama talks about his concerns of ruining her future, but it is his own King Lear patriarchal pride, control of his daughter, and desire to keep the old ways that keep him down. He responds to the situation at first by trying to keep her captive. He has strong hope that Setsuko won't run away to have her own life co-habitating with her boyfriend similar to the daughter of Mikami, who works in a dive bar called the Luna, of whom he has no problem dispensing reasonable advice or acting as a go-between, but he won't respond to logic, trickery, or pleas of his wife, or peer executives who face or have faced similar conditions.
Like John Ford, Frank Capra, and other filmmakers who work on fairly wide canvases. Ozu's films contain subplots with broad character actors who provide and comic relief. In Winter Equinox, one of the most entertaining is Kondo, who turns out to be a regular in the Luna, although he is trying to keep this aspect of his life away from Hirayama. It is all a part of the world of the youth that the executive is having a hard time understanding. He talks a good game, but ultimately it is a Japanese version of the Thin man's ballad (Something is happening and you don't know what it is do you Mr. Hirayma?")
This is the first Ozu film I have seen in color. It is also a joy to see this one in color with greens and salmons and oranges in interior and costuming, feeling authentic of the late fifties in Japan, Color is also key to the neon lights, advertising signs, and consumer products like orange soda that begin to creep into the environment.
Hirayama begrudgingly goes to the wedding, (which surprisingly is never shown) but still cannot fully agree and support with his daughter's decision. Yukiko, Setsuko's friend who earlier tried to trick him into agreeing to the marraige, apparently gets him to understand how inconsistent he has been in his advice and cajoles him into visiting his daughter and new son-in-law in Hiroshima where he has been transferred after Yukio and mother hassle him about not smiling (not even a grin) at Setsuko's wedding.
The film ends with Hirayama on a train sending a telegram to Setsuko and Taniguci of his arrival. The last shot is of a low angle with the train passing and disappearing into the forward distance. Low angle shots with a frame in the center, with a kind of frame in the center, usually in a home or restaurant with a layer or layers of action taking place towards vanishing point are, like the exterior environmental establishing shot, a key component of Ozu's visual language and vocabularly. His natural interactive dialog with moments of pause, trivia, and non sequitor references upon occasion as well as low camera placement give the viewer a sense of participation and observer of the world of relationships and changes that inhabit Ozu's worlds.
posted by well-executed buffet at 4:26 PM
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