Understanding Ozu

In recent times, there has been a resurgence of interest in the work of Yasujiro Ozu. He is, by common consent, one of the greatest Japanese filmmakers of all time. Some critics have called him the greatest Japanese film director; others would prefer to bestow that high honour on Akira Kurosawa.

That Ozu was a remarkable filmmaker, with a distinctive style of his own, that drew on traditional Japanese aesthetics is a fact that almost all discerning commentators of Japanese cinema would not contest.

Yasujiro Ozu was born in 1903 and died in 1963; over fifty of his films are currently available; some were lost.

He was preoccupied with one central theme - the Japanese family and is palpable decline as a consequence of the impact of the forces of modernization and Westernization.

While he dealt with this theme in a way that engendered a complex clarity, he was also deeply interested in forging a visual style that was consonant with the structures of feeling of the Japanese. Ozu, like his younger contemporary Akira Kurosawa, was profoundly influenced by Hollywood.

At the same time, he sought to re-discover the vitality of Japanese aesthetics and poetics of as a consequence of this encounter with the West. He was clearly inspired by Zen Buddhism; the sense of restraint and serenity that mark his films bear evidence to this fact.

Stylistically speaking there are a number defining features in Yasujiro Ozu's films; the pace of his films is extremely slow, almost meditative; his camera which is immobile most of the time is placed about three feet from the floor; the intention is to capture the low-level viewpoint of Japanese seated on a 'tatami' mat.

Most of the action of his films takes place inside homes. Some critics of Japanese cinema have maintained that the poetics of his cinema can be usefully related to Zen Buddhist culture as well such facets of Japanese culture as haiku poetry, flower arrangement, the tea ceremony, and ink paintings.

The Japanese concept of 'mono no aware' or melancholia, according to some, opens a wonderful window onto the creative imagination of Yasijiro Ozu.

A certain charming minimalism informs Ozu's cinema. The unchanging angle of vision, stationary camera, limited deployment of cinematic punctuations like dissolves and fade-ins, underline this fact.

Some years ago, in my book 'Cinema and Cultural Identity' (University Press of America), speaking of Ozu's cinema I made the following observation.

'Ozu's central theme, the nature of the Japanese family, his vision of wistful sadness, and his technique if filmmaking - distinguished by stationary and low-level camera set-ups, frontality of image, arrangement of characters, tempo, and the constant focus on empty rooms- can most easily be related to the traditional Japanese artistic sensibility.'

Some Western scholars like David Bordwell, who admire greatly the work of Ozu, reject such a clear-cut delineation of Japanese aesthetics as overly simplistic.

He insists on the need to bring into the equation such factors as the historical context in which he worked, the way Japanese tradition was, as all traditions are, constructed from the perspective of current concerns, and the interplay between Hollywood and Japanese culture in his imagination.

Ozu dealt with simple stories, non-heroic, mundane, underlining the extraordinary in the ordinary. Let us for example consider 'Tokyo Story', one of his most memorable films. It has been selected by many film scholars and critics, as one of the greatest films ever made.

Its story is uncomplicated. Two elderly parents who live in the provinces - in the seaside town of Onomichi - decide to visit their children living in Tokyo.

They are full of expectations. However, when they meet the children, they feel neglected. The children are busy, have their on lives to lead, and have very little time to spend with their parents. Only the widowed daughter-in-law, Noriko, is happy to spend some time with them and entertain them.

This sense of despair is what is at the heart of the film. The decline of the Japanese family, his pet theme, is clearly articulated in 'Tokyo Story'.

Yasujiro's Ozu's films are significant in terms of the use of space and time. The way he invests space, both full and empty, with human meaning is indeed interesting. Similarly, the ways in which he makes use of time compels admiration. Gilles Deleuze, the eminent French philosopher, has written two important books on cinematic time and image - what he terms movement image and time image. Movement image represents succession of instants of time, while time image is a direct representation of time. He finds the time image used imaginatively and productively by Ozu.

Ozu is a continuing presence in international cinema. Filmmakers from Taiwan to India, as well as those in the West, have been inspired by his work.