Fluctuation fatty

July 8, 2010Floating Weeds (1959) *****Directed by Yasujiro OzuMy tweet:Floating Weeds (1959)- Beautiful, simple story of tradition vs. modernization and what it means to belong to a family. ***** out of 5Other thoughts:So it turns out that Japanese cinema is more than just Kurosawa and anime... who knew? Filmspotting included Ozu along with Sam Fuller and Tarkovsky in their Overlooked Auteurs marathon, and Roger Ebert recently wrote an article bemoaning the fact that he went into a film school classroom and no one had seen any of Ozu's filmography. Ebert has really championed Floating Weeds especially considering that it's one of the few films in which he contributed a DVD commentary. They Shoot Pictures D! on't They had the film on their 1000 greatest list in past years, but this year, it's nowhere to be found. Ozu has seven films on the list, with Tokyo Story at number 11. This week, Criterion releases two of his early talking films from the 1930s on DVD. Ozu died in 1963, and his work didn't even begin to receive serious acclaim from the scholarly film community until the 1970s. Nowadays, he's not known at all by mainstream audiences, and he's not well watched even by film connoisseurs.All of this leads up to my finally being able to say that I've no longer overlooked Yasujiro Ozu, and I couldn't be happier that I finally caught up with one of his films. Floating Weeds is a lovely little morsel about a traveling kabuki acting troupe led by a fundamentally decent man who specifically sought out this little town so that he could revisit his mistress and son, both of whom he abandoned years ago. The boy, now a teenager, wants to go to college which puts him in a different soci! al class than actors. As such, his mother and the master both ! tell the boy that the master is actually his mother's brother.The acting troupe is an artifact of the past, and the boy is striving to make a difference in the future. These two divergent worlds collide when jealousies abound and romantic relationships form. The master, always with the best of intentions, runs the risk of ruining the lives of everyone around him because he's stuck in these artificial, outdated societal constructs about what it means to be a father. He must come face to face with the fact that he's not a good father, and the choices he's made in the past do in fact have consequences in the present.The entire film takes place during a hot, sweltering summer a few decades after the end of World War 2. Everyone's dressed in kimonos except the teenage boy. The actors, like a bunch of panting dogs, seek out women and sake in a way that brings no respect to themselves or those with whom they ultimately connect.Ozu frames the movie often by having the camera shoot the chara! cters directly head on so that they can look into our eyes and we can look back as they dialogue with each other. Often, there's a stiff, forced smile painted on their faces as if every single word and mannerism follows some kind of unspoken rule book of etiquette. In Floating Weeds, with the exception of the boy and the actors when they're alone together, we rarely get to see these people as they really are, considering that they almost become shells of their true selves in order to fulfill expectations of tradition and class which ought to have been left in the past. It's hard not to like the people we're presented, but it's easy to see how their naivety will ultimately bring them to the brink of total destruction.Floating Weeds is a sad film, but it's humble in scope which allows it not to become an epic tragedy. This is a movie about veiled emotions that boil over and cause harm in ways that easily could have been prevented if everyone was just a little more honest with! each other. Generations clash and good people act in bad ways! . Appare ntly, this is a common theme in Ozu's work. Floating Weeds is such a completely satisfying cinematic experience that I can't wait to delve into more of his work. Hopefully, more people will come to appreciate one of the great overlooked auteurs, and in my opinion, Floating Weeds seems like the perfect door with which one can enter Ozu's impressive world.
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