A good movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it seemed to have a decent reputation (among other things it is included in the ‘They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?’ list) and since it was directed by Yasujirō Ozu, I thought I might as well check it out. By now, I have seen 8 movies directed by Ozu and, even though I’m still not an expert, I think I’m now quite familiar with his work. In this case, what I enjoyed the most was to see again Setsuko Hara. Indeed, she had such a luminous screen presence, even though she played each time basically the same character (at least, in Ozu’s movies), she was so spellbinding to behold. I actually found out that Setsuko Hara herself never got married or had any kids which was quite a scandal back then in the 50’s in Japan. It is actually quite sad but it also gives even more resonance to her work with Ozu. Concerning the rest of the movie, well, even though it was pretty good, to be honest, it never really dazzled me though. I mean, as usual with Ozu, it was definitely a solid slice-of-life picture depicting a Japanese family in the 50’s. I especially enjoyed the fact that you had these 3 generations living together in seemingly perfect harmony, it would be unthinkable to live nowadays this way, at least, in most Western countries. There were also some intriguing thoughts about the traditional and modern way of lives in Japan back in those days and how they both cohabited at the time. And, yet, even though it was always intriguing to behold, to be honest, the end-result often felt like a soap-opera to me. Another issue was that the whole thing felt too similar to ‘Banshun’, my favorite movie from Ozu. Indeed, Setsuko Hara was playing pretty much the same character and her situation was almost identical as well. At some point, I got so confused that I thought this movie might be some sequel (eventually, Chishu Ryu did play her father in ‘Banshun’ while he played her brother in this one so I was pretty sure that the two movies were not related after all). Anyway, to conclude, even if it didn’t really blow me away, it was still a decent watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Yasujirō Ozu’s work.