Early Summer

My first exposure to the cinematic art of Yasujiro Ozu, and a prosaic revelation. This film was made in 1951, only six years after the end of WWII, and just after the occupation of Japan had ended. Yet it is universal, even unintentionally so, in its depiction of the family unit. Ozu said that he was making films for the Japanese, not for an international audience, yet this one says much about humanity that is coded in our DNA.

Are we not the species that knows it will die, that is aware that nothing lasts, that understands that change is the only certainty? And in this film, which unfolds with the humdrum pace and feel of a day in the life of an extended everyfamily, the magic of life's inconstancy is realized.

Ozu used an almost formulaic approach to scene setting and advancing, a static camera (for the most part) and an unvarying low camera angle from which to craft his almost plotless story. But he lets us into his characters' lives seamlessly and stealthily. They don't know we are there, and we often see them just as we would if we were in the room, from the back, in a group, from a distance. All is not told-- we deduce, we imagine, we put bits and pieces of information together-- as some far less able directors are wont to do, we are not told everything.

There is something basic and elemental and very truthful in this style of storytelling. In the same way that I love the spareness and order of Oriental art and design, I love Ozu's beautifully patterned cinematic vision.

This is the story of a cohesive, rather small extended Japanese family at the crossroads of societal change (they are in it but unaware that it is happening). And this little family breaks apart, pieces being scattered in different directions, a change society has inexorably taken or been driven. This means different things for the three generations of the family, and it is most poignant and revealing for the old parents who know best what it bodes. That almost everything happens organically and naturally and true to character is another of Ozu's triumphs since he wrote the screenplay with his co-author.

The stories told on this Criterion Collection disc of how Ozu worked show that everything we see on the screen was planned, orchestrated, fine-tuned by him, from five month writing sessions to exhaustive storyboarding to endless takes. He was, quite simply, an artist.

The Black Swan

Where to begin? This movie captivated me at first. I fell hard for its cinema verite quality, the incandescent and often searing performance of Natalie Portman, and, yes, the handheld camera following the action.
But somewhere between the lesbian sex and the shard stabbing, I began to notice that I was watching a movie. I began to see the puppet strings: the chocolate pudding blood, the costume bait and switch, the makeup masquerading as madness.
In the end, I couldn't make the leap with Aronofsky. He lost me somewhere on the way, and I think it was when he began hoisting me over the incongruities as if I would not notice they were there.
It seemed that he wanted to remake "The Red Shoes" without the poetry, the beauty or the pathos. It's a "Red Shoes" for the modern world--raw, ugly, and doomed. Portman's performance alone redeems this film and saves it from being a parody of mental anguish and thwarted desire.