Late Spring

“Ozu. Ozu is a filmmaker who… He didn’t give a shit about a lot of rules. Most importantly, a rule we spent a lot of time learning about, which is the 180-degree line. This is an imaginary line between conversations. Because film is a two-dimensional, visual art form, if you move the camera across this imaginary line, what will happen in the editorial process is it will look like characters are looking in different directions, which can sometimes be confusing or can put an audience in a state of unease. Ozu didn’t give a fuck about the line. He would jump it all the time. He also was very famous for shooting doorways. But what I’m going to talk to you about with Ozu right now, in this movie, is his capacity for the most emotional endings you’ll ever see in your life. Holding your hand throughout a story and making you fall in love with characters and then just ripping your heart out at the end of the movie in a way that oftentimes leaves you sobbing. But also in a way that makes you question everything that you saw before. Late Spring is a great example of this. Late Spring was the first Ozu movie I ever saw. I saw it before I had children, obviously, I was in my twenties. And it’s a story about a father and a daughter at its heart. Watching this movie, along with making my first film, Fruitvale Station, made me realize that I wanted to be a father.”

“And Late Spring, where is that? Ozu, one of my favorite directors. And what he does is so simple. You know, the camera's on sticks, it's about three feet off the ground and a 50 millimeter lens, and he just lets it stay and lets the characters work the frame. And what happens is that he focuses so much, here it is, he focuses on intimate relationships, and by kind of the repetition of the routines of the characters, you get to know them in a way that you would know someone in your own family. And so when that gets disrupted, you know, you have this incredible catharsis, and it's just a, I mean, he's a master. And I know his pacing, it's kind of is slow, but it's interesting about film, you know, for some reason in this country we think, "Oh, you know, I went to see something last night, it was just, it was it's just so fast, it went just like that." And I'm thinking like, you know, we never say that about anything we really like. We don't say, "You know, I had sex last night and it went just like that," or "You know, I sat down and had a real nice dinner and it went just like that," you know. So I don't know, I mean, I love getting lost in Ozu's world.”

“And then it would be nice to come back to the Ozu, now that I'm, you know, way older than I was in film school, and see how I feel about it. That'd be cool.”

“[Translated] Now, where there's Akira Kurosawa, there's Yasujiro Ozu. A film by Ozu. He did Tokyo Story, but my favorite is Late Spring. It's got the best scene of Setsuko Hara where she's riding a bicycle. It's actually Setsuko Hara's birthday today, which is quite a coincidence. I absolutely love this film.”

“[Translated] I'd like to start with Ozu's Late Spring. I actually don't have this Blu-ray edition, so this is... My very first pick.”

“Let’s stay with the female aspect of resistance and go back to the very peaceful yet strict resistance. There is a movie by Ozu and it’s called Late Spring. The main character resists the push from the outside to be married off. That told in the most delicate and sensitive details is a true… a true delight.”