When the schedule for the Third Annual Nitrate Picture Show, a film festival in at the George Eastman museum in Rochester, New York celebrating the projection of the pristine and highly flammable nitrate stock, was unveiled, I felt an exhilaration upon realizing an Ozu film, Early Summer, was being screened. I have seen the film before, actually when the Museum's Dryden Theatre showed the whole Noriko trilogy (the most underrated, possibly most profound, trilogy in film) two years prior. Yet, I was shocked that, upon second viewing, my appreciation for this film ballooned exponentially. Maybe it was because the theatre was packed; sharing this experience with so many people seems to amplify my connection with the story and characters. Maybe it was because the film, itself, was shipped from Japan...and original print struck from the negatives that originated from Ozu's production. It is a fleeting sense of romanticism, yes, but I was ready to fall in love again with a film from one of my favorite directors. What makes any Ozu film refreshing is how I must readjust to his filmic techniques which remain so nontraditional in approach. In film school, it is often difficult to experience film form so contrary to mainstream philosophy. Thus, returning to an Ozu film after a time always carries with it a newness: from meticulous composition to bizarre shot coverage of a regular conversation, I am forced to entreat my creative inspiration and reassurance in the realization that there is always more than one way to tell a story visually, that different individuals from different cultures reflect such experiences through unique, almost personal modes of filmmaking. Early Summer is Ozu's 1951 serving of his time-tested dish, detailing the rumblings and severances of the modern Japanese family. Yet, as part of the aforementioned Noriko trilogy, threaded together with Late Spring and the quintessential Tokyo Story by Setsuko Hara's immortal titular character, a woman lies at the center of the familiar thematic explorations. Briefly, Noriko happily lives with her extended family in Tokyo, including her brother and wife with their two sons as well as her parents. When a visiting uncle exclaims in wry defiance that Noriko is twenty-eight, he sets in motion familial anxiety and swiftly constructed expectations for the single woman. In one immediate whim, suppressed realizations became rashly illuminated, with the family now scurrying to figure out how Noriko can marry a proper man. Difficulties arise when Noriko almost gleefully denies any desire to become a wife. There is a quote of which I paraphrase from Ozu where he posits that, in a sense, each generation has their own rules. The two brothers in the film, who provide much of the gentle hilarity in the film, essentially have their own rules of how they should act and react to the world in relation to their parents. And, for the most part, this story does depict such generational rules in conflict though, ultimately, one set of rules wins out, reluctantly. Nevertheless, the epicenter of familial strife does not really lie in generational abrasions but on an individual's set of rules. Noriko detaches herself from current tendencies and popular expectation. Her willingness to forgo marriage, even love, is seen as contrapuntal. Most of the characters are baffled by Noriko's unwavering strength as they claw to salvage some figment of an alternative lifestyle. Yet, Ozu's script cleverly adds pressure onto the heroine, whose smiling face (a staple of the Noriko character, a face and performance one can write a book about) becomes a slowly crumbling facade. Numerous occasions find a character making the remark that Noriko is twenty-eight years old and that she needs to get married. Each instance is like another shove into the corner, a sense of claustrophobia seemingly inevitable. As we observe Noriko repeatedly trying to evade the question of marriage, we see her backing up and stumbling, the smile trying to maintain balance. Whether it be from her pesky friends, who humorously split between the married friends and single friends, or from her stern brother, who seems to try to maintain a paternal order in a house that carries so much responsibility, predicating a short temper. Noriko represents a new woman, so to speak, one that developed in the modernizing, and westernizing postwar Japan. This episode of Japanese history is defined by Ozu as an entanglement of ideology, tradition, and morality. Knots are made between old, predictable lifestyles and new, uncertain lifestyles. Urbanizing leads to migration which can also lead to the break ups of extended and nuclear families, endorsing a newfound individuality that is not malnourished of responsibilities but has realigned responsibilities to revolve around the individual's goals. And as a woman expressing this notion of individuality, Noriko steps into territory many other people find unsettling due to an ignorance established by their acceptance of a well-grounded order. So it is even more astonishing when Noriko, towards the end of the film, finally decides to marry, not to a man whom everyone was expecting her to marry, but a childhood friend, widower, and a father of a toddler. Not only that, she makes this decision on her own, separate from the affirming graces of her parents. Ozu gives Noriko incredible agency in a changing world that still does not understand such agency even exists. And what makes his storytelling all the more intriguing is that he is not constructing diametrical opposites between tradition and change. In other words, no one is worse or evil because of their beliefs. In addition, Ozu's allowance for Noriko's mobility is also interacting with the consequence of such mobility. There is a cost to her independence, to her quiet zeal to do things her way. Just as crucially, such zeal is conclusively not a downfall and Noriko is not, 'put in her place,' so to speak. These facets of representation inject a vibrancy and fullness into the protagonist and, subsequently, to the many family members and friends she interacts with...on paper. Ultimately, it is Setsuko who animates the detailed yet frozen image of Noriko. Yet there is more to be discussed. Ozu is known to have an elliptical structure in narrative, stepping aside exhibiting what most other filmmakers would deem as the most important moments in the film. In Early Summer, we do not see Noriko marry her husband. We do not see her leave Tokyo and begin a new chapter apart from her family, to start anew in the country town of Akita. Ozu turns his gentle gaze onto her parents, who, after being paralyzed in disappointment in their daughter's sudden decision, are committed to staying strong and staying positive (a more optimistic ending than the other two Noriko films). What is most intriguing is that the last time we see Noriko, she is slumped over a table, crying into her arms, drowning in a biting sorrow that she is the reason her family is breaking up (it must be said that her leaving makes it harder for her brother to support their parents in the house so the parents move to another town with the aforementioned uncle). Now, any superficial analysis could surmise that this visual sendoff of the protagonist suggests a resonating sadness to this whole tale and that Ozu questions Noriko's independence. In spite of this possible suggestion, you must look at the ellipses of the narrative. You must somehow look at what Ozu does not show you. As the parents sit and ponder, they wonder on their daughter's condition, letting the audience know that she did, in fact, go to live with her husband and the marriage had been certified. Consequently, a perception can be made that despite the cost of breaking up the family, the traditional unity of Japanese society, Noriko still ended up what she wanted to do all along. How did we know this was what she really wanted? She reveals it to her sister-in-law on the beach in an earlier scene, embraced by the soft, salty air. She was looking for someone she could trust, and she found him in this man. Her persistence supplemented with patience becomes the envy of her sister-in-law, who admitted ignorance to love and marriage when she married. And this beach scene, which also sees Noriko run in the sand, waving her arms with such uninhibited joviality, embodies the strength of this modern woman. Compositionally, there are many examples of how Ozu visually represents this reinforced sense of feminine self. I'll choose one powerful example. After excusing themselves from the family meeting of which Noriko surprised everyone with her profession to marry, her parents sit, flanking their beds, as still as statues. In the background, Noriko walks into frame, walking from one end to the other and back, her body interrupts the stasis of thought and incredulity. Contrapuntal manifested in mise en scene, her movement is literally perpendicular to the rigid and staggered line made by the two aging parents. This visual representation depicts a woman free from the mercy of continuous pressure of familial expectation. It hints at the same movement I refer to in the beach scene. If all of this might seem subtle, that is because it is subtle. Ozu presents complex stories with simplicity and subduedness. Restraint is the dominating factor all of his characters exhibit, so even plain movement unveils something more. In this case, her rules, all the way until the end. More can be said about Setsuko's acting, the elegiac editing as it relates to the narratological rhythm of musical interludes, and even the blocking. I write this off memory of the my second time watching Early Summer. Nonetheless, there is no reservation I hold when celebrating this film. It carries with it an insightful timelessness while being a fantastic document of a certain time and place. Consequently, you cannot discerp the film from its historical framework but you are enabled to place it into a more contemporary context, an indication of the dazzling power emanating from the flammable celluloid elucidated by projector light.
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