Review of Early Spring

Ozu's genius is to examine universal human dilemmas (tension with aging parents in Tokyo Story; mid-life crisis and boredom with the routines of job and marriage in Early Spring) in a way that is firmly rooted in a specific time and place--Japan in the post-war period. We learn much about Japanese life in the early years of the boom: the look of homes and offices, the way people commemorate the happy and sad events of their lives, how people eat in a noodle shop, a dying man's way of facing death, playing mah-jong, the switch from western to Japanese clothing for different moods and times of day. The camera moves hardly at all and records everything carefully and beautifully, almost like an ethnographic documentary, from its location near the level of a tatami mat. The vistas of office corridors and train lines are breathtaking, not boring. The plot is both moving and slow-moving, a lyrical and thoughtful Japanese version of The Seven Year Itch (married salary worker tempted by flirtatious fellow commuter). Ozu makes traditional values seem convincing and necessary--he doesn't hit us over the head with family loyalty but portrays it as an essential part of life that the protagonist ultimately embraces voluntarily and with full understanding of its meaning, though not without a sense of loss and resignation. Only a filmmaker of Ozu's stature could make me tearful with joy at the sight of a brickyard!