Tokyo: Wim Wenders Leads Pageant Tribute to Legendary Auteur Yasujiro Ozu

Main filmmakers from China, Germany, Japan and the U.S. spoke of their admiration for Yasujiro Ozu as a part of the celebrations at Tokyo Worldwide Movie Pageant for the one hundred and twentieth anniversary of the legendary Japanese director’s delivery.

Wim Wenders opened proceedings by introducing a screening of a 4K digitally restored model of the 1959 comedy Good Morning, describing Ozu as “the grasp,” earlier than a chat occasion that includes Jia Zhangke, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Kelly Reichardt.

A passionate acolyte of Ozu, Wenders shot a documentary in regards to the acclaimed director titled Tokyo-ga 4 a long time in the past, and 10 years later got here to the Tokyo fest for his ninetieth anniversary celebrations.

Good Morning, the second movie he shot in shade, is a lightweight however perceptive chronicle of household life in postwar Japan of the type Ozu was so adept at creating.

“Watching Good Morning for the primary time in a very long time, I used to be struck by how the motion takes place in such a small space, and it’s the identical ‘small’ dramas that punctuate so many Ozu movies,” mentioned Kurosawa, who famous that the director may typically additionally painting surprising violence.

Reichardt, herself identified for minimalist tales of atypical folks, spoke of the “excellent composition, every body like a portray” portraying “the day-to-day dramas of life, the trivia, with no heroes.”

The plot of Good Morning revolves round nothing far more than two younger brothers nagging their dad and mom to purchase a TV, reminding Zhangke of his personal youth, “After I was a baby in China within the Seventies, I wished a tv set, similar to the 2 boys.”

He added: “If Ozu was nonetheless alive immediately within the age of AI, I believe the story could be of kids who desire a robotic.”

Kurosawa described his ideas on Ozu by way of the prism of The Munekata Sisters (1950), which he famous that whereas being firmly rooted inside the director’s dominant theme of the Japanese household construction of the period, additionally displayed cynicism and nihilism, in addition to an outline of home violence that had not beforehand been seen on movie in Japan.   

For Zhangke, it was Ozu’s capability to painting the “shifts within the Japanese financial system and society, and the way individuals lived by way of them,” that set him aside from his contemporaries.

On her first journey to Japan, Reichardt defined that what she is aware of of the nation got here largely by way of cinema, and Ozu particularly.

“Tokyo Story is a type of highway film. However whereas in a U.S. movie the story could be by way of an existential disaster the place you permit and end up, and it’s your loved ones holding you down, in Ozu, the search is right here. You’re the place you’re purported to be,” urged Reichardt. “The thought of ‘I’m joyful as I’m’ that’s expressed in by characters in Ozu movies is such an un-American thought. Dissatisfaction is so central to U.S. movie.”

Reichardt added that it was troublesome to speak about impressions of particular person works in Ozu’s oeuvre as they “really feel like an ongoing dialog.”

Digitally remastered 4K variations of 17 Ozu movies are being screened on the pageant, together with Tokyo Story (1953), which nonetheless ceaselessly seems close to the highest on all-time nice movie rankings seven a long time after its launch.