The Silences of Ozu

Ma Yuan (1160–1165 to 1225) - Mountain Stroll in Spring

As I said earlier, Ozu is considered the most Japanese among Japanese filmmakers, though the Nippon specificity is hidden behind mundane contemporaneity.

One can draw a parallel between the movies of Ozu (with heroes from the middle-class of fifties' Tokyo) and any form of traditional Japanese art, let's say, ikebana, Noh, the ceremonial of tea preparation, or haiku.

Let's talk a tinny bit about haiku. Here's the famous one that comes from Bashō:

an ancient pond / a frog jumps in / the splash of water

(I understood it much more after watching Kiarostami's Five Dedicated To Ozu).

Between the verses there are silences; verses loading silences with heavy suggestions.

The music of Arvo Pärt: the prepared piano creates the bell sound; between two bell sounds, silence; music expressed by silences; but the silences are prepared by the sounds that precede them.

Ma Yuan (who lived in the twelfth century, and in the first quarter of the thirteen one) was painting his landscapes only in one corner of the canvas. Without that painted corner, the sheet of paper would have remained just a sheet of paper; now it was carrying the void, the silence, loaded by the painted corner.

This silence, this void, full of suggestions conveyed by rare sounds, tinny images in one corner, disparate verses: this MU from the tombstone of Ozu, loaded by all that his life has conveyed.

I will comment here only one scene from Bakushû (Early Spring) to show there the relationship between words and silences.

Noriko (Setsuko Hara) is announcing her family that she would marry a friend her age. All family is unpleasantly surprised. They had found for her such a good prospect, and now she would make her way! Her brother (Chishu Ryu) is the most upset, but all others are complaining, except for the father, who's not saying anything.

Noriko is not in a comfortable situation, only she's very determined.

The discussion is going on while suddenly mother says to her husband, let's go upstairs to sleep.

So they leave the room. You'd say that mother realized that's nothing to do any more; however she goes on complaining, now alone with her husband, who doesn't say anything, only a periodic mumbling, Hm.

In the end mother gets silent. At that moment Noriko passes their bedroom, without a word. And father is mumbling again, Hm.



(Yasujiro Ozu and Setsuko Hara)