Updates, Live: Ozu: The Transcendental Structure

- Le moment décisif -
(Chishu Ryu in Banshun - Late Spring)

André Bazin studied this movie structure and used the terms of quotidien, moment décisif, and stasis.

The films of Ozu start in the everyday, in the perfect normality, dans le quotidien. Late Spring starts with a ceremony of tea preparation and we learn that the father of one of the young ladies there is teaching at a university and is just preparing a scientific paper. We see then the father working at home on the paper, along with his assistant; the daughter comes from the tea ceremony and asks the two men whether they would like something to drink or eat. Bakushû (Early Summer), starts with a morning scene at home: Noriko is helping her sister-in-law to feed the kids and then is leaving for office. In Tôkyô Monogatari (Tokyo Story) the old parents are preparing for their trip to Tokyo, a neighbor is passing by the window, they tell her that one of their sons will meet them at Osaka.

Ozu takes much care in the rigor this everyday is formalized in his movies: nothing special happens in the starting sequences, nothing is above normality, above banality.

The story then evolves rapidly in disruptions: weird signs suggest that something is not perfect. The son and the daughter are not actually happy with the coming of their parents. Noriko is not married and that's a problem. Or Noriko is a widow and her in-laws exploit her generosity.

These disruptions multiply in cascade and the situation gets more and more off control, up to the point of explosion: the decisive moment, le moment décisif.

In Late Spring the father, now alone, is peeling slowly an apple. It's one of the great cinema scenes of all times! He is silent and serious, at a certain moment we do not see any more his face, his shoulders seem to shiver a bit, then his chin is bowing down and he looses the apple.

In Tokyo Story, Noriko is suddenly bursting into tears.

It is interesting, the disruptions have accumulated up to the point. Some of those disruptions were overwhelmingly dramatic. The decisive moment is coming as the outcome of the whole story: the father will live from now on alone (Late Spring); the widow is realizing the desert of her life (Tokyo Story).

And immediately after the point of explosion, the moment of stasis comes: a frozen image revealing us that anything that happens is not that important in the cosmical order, life goes on no matter what: old folks will remain alone and eventually die, new babies will come to the world, some of us will be lucky, some not, while sea waves will continue their ride over the shore, the clouds will continue to change their shape slowly, there will be sundown and sunset, day after day.

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And we come again at Late Spring; here is the last scene: the decisive moment followed by the stasis.