Ozu and Kurosawa

 

Watching an Ozu film is one of the great pleasures of life. Many of his films have similar themes - people having to adjust to changed circumstances, or fathers coming to terms with their daughters looking for men to marry. The feeling that is evoked in all his films is the stoic and good-humoured acceptance of  life's disappointments. Characters put on a smiling face over the undercurrent of sadness. There is something quintessentially Japanese about it, but it is something I can relate to, so there must be an Indian vein to it in our psyche.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f4Chp10Vms

Kurosawa's films tend to be more dramatic. The characters are mercurial, moved by passion and there is visual movement that is intensely dramatic. With Ozu, characters are often just sitting together and conversing and the drama is slow and meditative and under the surface. There are no violent movements and if there is conflict, then it seems unavoidable on account of the movement of time and circumstance. Conflicts take time to show their nature and their resolution often lies in the acceptance of conflicts, as in life. Kurosawa's films can be about great courage or heroism, or great greed and ambition. Ozu's characters have small ambitions and smaller everyday conflicts. With Kurosawa, the movement is hypnotic. With Ozu, it is the stillness that is hypnotic. When I was younger I preferred Kurosawa. Indeed, it was a long time before I could watch an Ozu film, but now, it is Ozu who makes my heart sing.

I love Japanese films and novels for reasons I don't completely understand.