Yasujiro Ozu

You have to remember that it’s an old movie. It’s as perfect as it can be for what he was aiming for, which is a reminder to understand what the director is trying to accomplish.
For the record, I found Late Spring pretty darn near perfection.

Age hardly matters to me. Since there are artsier movies in this day and age, too, I only look at what the director tries to accomplish. But that doesn't mean I'm going to forgive a lack of writing. This is a story, and a story needs good writing. This isn't the same as an experimental movie like say The Mirror.

Obviously we can keep going around in circles on this.

I'll just end by saying that I think that simplicity is one of the hardest things to do as an artist because there's nowhere to hide. Adding more "layers" (ie characters and subplots) to Late Spring might have made it more complex, but it would also be a totally different movie with a totally different vibe. It's like suggesting that we should have spent part of Jeanne Dielman following the son around for a bit. The intensity of staying locked into the single father-daughter dynamic is what makes it stand out to me and what makes it so special. Implying that not folding more into the story shows a lack of skill on Ozu's part or an error in judgement doesn't wash for me.

It is. Period. Full stop.



It means the artist in question has a completely comprehensive idea of what they want to say so that they can pack as much of their ideas and emotion and personality into it, with the fewest gestures. Without anything extraneous. They keep removing things until all that remains is the essence. If you do this wrong, if you remove too much or too little, the art in question is either incomplete or tainted. It's extraordinarily difficult to do this well, and Ozu is one of the absolute masters of minimalism.



There is a reason the haiku has been one of the most resilient forms of poetry through the ages. Just because they are only a few words long, doesn't make them easier to write. It makes it that much harder to try and figure out what words you have to use to make sure everything you want to say can be understood, empathized with and felt. You don't have any room for error. You can't waste a single syllable.


Art isn't math. Complexity doesn't equal profundity. This conversation has become absurd.

So you're saying it's impossible to hold the essence without letting the audience know how their decisions affect the world around them or vise-versa? It's perfectly possible. The idea that they would be "completely different movies" is just theory. And for the final time, a father daughter dynamic can be told with a better story, not just one you can pull from next door. The only reason people are going in "circles" is because this possibility isn't being addressed.

I'm saying I don't think that widening the scope of the film would strengthen it and would possibly detract for the magic of the movie.

Please point me at this movie you're referring to, because I would love to check it out.

You've got a "google machine."

So there's a better father-daughter movie out there (or possibly several of them), but you won't name even one?

I'd like to know what movie you're specifically thinking of when you say that this kind of story can be told in a better way, not what google will spit out if I type in "best father-daughter movies".

EDIT: Because I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that Late Spring and An Autumn Afternoon are the two main ones coming to mind.

I avoided it because we could end up going on full discussions of other movies when this is predominantly a thread about one director. I told you to google it so you could get some examples. But if you want a personal recommendation about effective father daughter movies with more people involved in the realism: A Separation. THAT'S realism that you can't just get from next door. And maybe it is a different movie technically, but it doesn't disprove that the same effect could've been made with extra detail. In fact, once I'm comfortable enough in the genre, I'll write one with the same mood as Late Spring, and with more detail. And I know when I suck at something and won't sugarcoat it. I know I can write it if I focus enough.

While I liked the dynamic between the father and daughter in A Separation, I wouldn't consider that relationship the heart of the movie. But let's say for the sake of argument that this is a "father-daughter film."

We're now talking about a film with more sensationalist content:

This is an example of a movie where the father-daughter conflict is driven by strong outside factors, not the internal elements of the relationship. Other characters have to be involved because those characters are driving the conflict. And the driving questions of the film don't actually feel like they are about the father and daughter. They're about the outcome of the court case and the family's future.

You keep talking about realism "from next door" as if that makes it less important or compelling. I'd ask you to consider that the realism being of that "next door" nature is actually what's appealing about it to many viewers.

I go to one of my favorite quotes, from George Eliot: “But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

Again: you're welcome to find Ozu's films lacking. But your ideas about making the plot more extraordinary and bringing in more characters aren't minor tweaks to his films. You're now describing a filmmaker with completely different goals making completely different movies.

The goal itself does not justify the end result. Lots of people also find the Transformers movies captivating. People find Before Sunrise captivating. This brand of appeal is based on simplicity, and simplicity cannot simply be excused by "artistic merit." Focusing on only one thing for two hours and justifying it with "realism" and "direction" essentially means you're using professional-sounding words to hide the simplicity. It's hardly any different to me from using heavy SFX to make up for a lacking plot. In the end, you're using visual / directorial decisions to hide it, and you've added another layer above the flaw labelled "relationship themes." Didn't work on me. I predicted the end, I even predicted the dialogue. And if a nobody like me who only wrote one novel can predict that much, then that means the writing is relying on one strength, again, to justify any lack of detail. And yes, I'm very proud of my debut novel, but even so, and even if I recognize my of FoS, I won't forget my place.

And anyone who thinks A Separation isn't about the father daughter relationship didn't have to go through a divorce at the age of seven, or if they did they blotted out all emotions stemming from it. The entire time you're worried about the father daughter relationship and what these outside events will do to that relationship.


Of course, I should mention that I judge movies based on a criteria, and I'm not choosing from my "favorites," which, considering my relationships with Good Burger and Citizen Kane, would be chaotic. If the movie has heavy replay value for its sentiment, I can see why people would get behind that at least.

I've made this point many times in the past, but now it's your turn to hear it. Sorry.

When discussing art the word "should" makes me bristle. Which sentence makes me sound most reasonable?:

"I like werewolf movies more than serial killer movies" or
"All horror movies should be about werewolves"

You're free to find Ozu boring and you're free to avoid his movies in the future but elements that you don't enjoy are not necessarily "flaws". Halloween isn't flawed because Michael Myers isn't a werewolf, regardless of how I feel about it. If that's an absurd example, it's because I'm pointing out that an artist can't possibly satisfy every individual viewer's preference. Some viewers have stupid preferences.

I'm just suggesting that you'd get much less pushback from an "I don't vibe with Ozu" attitude as opposed to "Ozu fails at storytelling".

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Similar to how I don’t vibe with Fulci, or Cassavetes. I recognize they have talent, but they aren’t for me.

When one criticizes a great director, one of the all-time greats, the problem is usually not with the director but with that person.

You have 50 years of film criticism and hundreds of avid and knowledgeable cinephiles who were deeply moved and changed by those films against you. Books were written on the complexities of Ozu's stories and techniques. You can't win. You can give up and admit Ozu's not for you. But pretending Ozu was bad at writing stories is preposterous and your rationale for that isn't compelling in the least.




... you were saying?

So not next door, but... his own door.

And yes, by absolute chance, Ozu's Tokyo Story is one of Farhadi's 10 favorite films.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

The idea that simplicity is in itself a flaw, is one of the most ludicrous things I've read on this board.


How many pages have been devoted to discussing the value of simplicity? How many pages have talked about how challenging it is for an artist to reduce any piece of art to its essence? And the response that this gets is to have it all just waved away with "simplicity cannot be excused with artistic merit".


Huh?


Yes it can. It's a completely legit avenue for any artist to go down. It achieves things complexity never can. Sorry if you don't understand it. Because you clearly don't. And I'm sorry if you think you could do better, but I guarantee it's considerably more difficult than one would think, and takes years of nearly monastic devotion to your craft to even get in the same universe as Ozu operates. And being able to guess the end of one of his films, and thinking that is some kind of proof that you're at his level, kind of makes it pretty clear you don't know what you're talking about here.

Ha!


Is that from an Ozu movie?

Or to extend your Halloween example, I guess Zombies remake is better since it offers the viewer a more complete (complex!) backstory for Myers' pathology. The original is essentially a minimalist horror film. An Ozu slasher. It's simplicity and lack of explanations for why this is all happening one of its greatest virtues. A masterclass in filmmaking. But....since artistic merit is apparently no excuse for such a sin as simplicity, I guess it was all just a bunch of pretty angles that fooled people into believing it was a good movie.


But look! Now we've got Zombies slab of shit where we get to see how Michael Myers mother was abusive trash and he dreams of white horses. Complex, so....better?


Yeah, that makes lots of sense, even if the whole essence of this argument against simplicity contains a clear paradox. Can criticism this unbelievably basic be discounted, under the same pre-text as an Ozu? How simple can a movie criticism be, before we begin to wonder 'couldnt anybody do this?'


In short, I think this thread is clearly where I've come to die.

I never said "Ozu's" bad at storytelling." I Said this ONE movie needs better writing. I said I could predict the ending and the dialogue because it was such a simple story. If you're going to argue my points, read them first. That's what's really upsetting, not the disagreement itself. I don't vibe with predictable endings or predictable scenarios, so, before you further offend me by misreading ot again, go find my multiple posts where i say the only Ozu movie ive seen is Late Spring. Any argument with false assumptions has no weight to me, so I will not be "admitting" that Ozu isn't fot me after one movie. One more time. R e a d. Because if everyone's gonna make a crap statement about me without realizing it, I'm not gonna be a part of this conversation. And I've got better conversations on this site to be a part of, and I'm getting really sick of this one. So I'm going to work now and I wont be returning to this thread. Too much bull crap spewed over misreading much of what I said.

Practise what you preach. You've been misconstruing what everyone else has said for pages.