esrosedotblog

NEAR SPINSTERHOOD

Today's NYTimes Best 1176 Film was in Japanese from the director Yasujiro Ozu

Banshun / Late Spring (1949)

A late twenties daughter stays with her widower father and cares for him.

She is getting 'old' in the marriagability sense. An old auntie interferes and arranges a marriage.

The father supports the aunt by pretending that he is getting married too. The daughter marries. It is perfectly apparent that no one but the aunt is happy about this outcome. We never even see the the husband.

We do not see a lot of things on the surface. In the opening and at the end we are shown the sea; the waves rolling in. A lot is happening under the surface there as well.

And so on.

The film is very gentle and very sad. It inches along. The inexorable slide toward arranged marriage and missed opportunities for the girl and her father is only painful in retrospect. At times, as an observer, I am colluding mentally with the aunt. I am thinking that this young woman is way too dependent on her Dad and he on her. But so what?

A good question.

I had a little trouble nodding along with the inching. There is a long Noh sequence that is hard to take. The cultural stuff is a bit thick for a westerner to take.

I will give it a 4 out of Netflix5.

This film was made only 4 years after the Second World War. There is some reference to the 'hard times' of the War but, amazingly, there is little indication of it anywhere in the film.

It just shows how quickly terrible wounds are healed and people move on.