35-37 Naruse: Volume One

[Drucker]

I was so blown away with Woman Ascends the Stairs after the film club discussion. Can't wait!

[Michael Kerpan]

Well, as much as I admire "When the Woman Ascends the Stairs...", I love all the films in this set even more. In fact, Repast is my (honorary) no. 2 film overall (right after Tokyo Story) -- and Sound of the Mountain was actually the first Naruse film that blew me away. It was only after the epiphany provided by these two films (plus Lightning), that I began to properly appreciate the Naruse films I had first seen.

[Jack Phillips]

Well, as much as I admire "When the Woman Ascends the Stairs...", I love all the films in this set even more. In fact, Repast is my (honorary) no. 2 film overall (right after Tokyo Story) -- and Sound of the Mountain was actually the first Naruse film that blew me away. It was only after the epiphany provided by these two films (plus Lightning), that I began to properly appreciate the Naruse films I had first seen.

I don't necessarily disagree with you (and I haven't seen Lightning) but the film that currently engages me most is Flowing. And the film I want to re-watch most is Summer Clouds.

I find the lack access to the lion-share of Naruse very frustrating.

[Michael Kerpan]

I don't necessarily disagree with you (and I haven't seen Lightning) but the film that currently engages me most is Flowing. And the film I want to re-watch most is Summer Clouds.

I find the lack access to the lion-share of Naruse very frustrating.

I didn't see Flowing until relatively late -- maybe when the retrospective happened in 2003, maybe not until the MOC DVD. I love it -- but it didn't play any role into my transformation from an Ozu fanatic to an Ozu and Naruse fanatic. ;~}

Summer Clouds is quite interesting -- belonging to a Toho sub-genre not well represented on DVD -- sprawling (and long-ish), star-studded family dramas (with all sorts of sub-plots). Naruse made a bunch of these -- and even Ozu had to make one when he was lent to Toho (End of Summer). Summer Clouds was unusual, however, because of its rural setting.

At least as far as I'm concerned, there are around 40 essential (or almost so) Naruse films that are not readily available....

[jguitar]

Regarding Sound of the Mountain, have you read the Kawabata novel, Michael? Naruse is, depending on the day, my favorite filmmaker, and I remember loving Sound of the Mountain when I first watched it. I read Kawabata's novel last summer and found that to be really wonderful. Then I watched the film again, and it felt rather flat to me -- I remember thinking the music signalling transitions to be a little annoying and the (necessary) truncation of the novel gave the film a different tone that didn't quite sit right. An odd reaction for me.

However, I agree with your esteem for Lightning; that's a film I try to get people to see whenever possible.

[Michael Kerpan]

I find Kawabata's novel and Naruse's film (with its lovely script by Yoko Mizuki) to be sufficiently different -- to allow me to appreciate them both equally. (After all, Mizuki and Naruse shift the focus from the father-in-law to the daughter-in-law).

I'm mystified (and disappointed) that Lightning never got a subbed release.

[Michael Kerpan]

Some of us have jobs which makes movie downloading a very bad idea. (Now, if I ever get to retire...)

[jguitar]

Sure -- and I've availed myself of those (it's how I saw Lightning). But that will still leave a lot of folks out in the cold; plus the quality, of both prints and subtitles, is a little uneven (more uneven sometimes than others, as Stanwyck says in The Lady Eve). But I'm still grateful for them. Also, downloading is not the only possible source out there for subtitled versions of these things.

And Michael, you're completely right in your assessment of film and book. I loved the book so much and saw the film directly after finishing without waiting for the glow of the book to dissipate.

[tomN245]

I really want this collection, but I don't want to fork out tons of money for it. I have heard many good things about Naruse. I have a Truffaut volume 1 (with 6 films, also oop), if anyone wants to switch, and is tired of having it on their shelf. In the London or South East area.

[Drucker]

I really want this collection, but I don't want to fork out tons of money for it. I have heard many good things about Naruse. I have a Truffaut volume 1 (with 6 films, also oop), if anyone wants to switch, and is tired of having it on their shelf. In the London or South East area.

5 minutes left for 70 American dollars right now on ebay at the link I posted. Certainly a bargain at this point.

[Drucker]

I'm going through the box set this weekend (I hope!). Just watched Repast and will watch Sound of the Mountain next. Here are some thoughts on Repast. I still need to go through the book and this thread again, so I'll be posting more notes.

The only sound film of Naruse's I'd seen before this is the widescreen, very stylish When A Woman Ascends The Stairs. To see a very peaceful, almost Ozu-esque (notice those camera angles as they are seated in the house!) drama from Naruse was fascinating.
The first thing that stuck out to me watching this film was just how much more the wife is interested in the cat than her husband. That, and the soundtrack was very American sounding to me. The music was much more present and in-line with the events of the film than I'm used to seeing in a Japanese film.

The central themes of Repast are questions without answers (in fact, a frequent lack of resolution). Frequently, throughout the film,
questions are asked, and the scene ends.
At the bar: "Does your wife hassle you?" after the husband says he prefers to drink beer outside of the house.
While with her friends: "Why should a happy wife like you envy a maid like me?"

In the extra video-interview, the point is raised that a theme of the film is not necessarily to reach a point of acceptance but clarity in the
characters. To boil it down to a cliche: the grass is always greener on the other side. What could come off as a cheap trick really doesn't. The husband is a decent man who is somewhat negligent in his duties as a husband.

The other main theme is drawn from the husband's line to his niece that "Life is full of contradictions." This was the theme that constantly stuck out to me. For example, notice how the husband's niece wants more money. She has to give half of her monthly paycheck to her parents. Michiyo's friend (the one who doesn't know why Michiyo would envy) has plenty of money, enough to treat her former classmates and buy Michiyo's husband a tie. Again, this is classic grass is greener syndrome to me.

What is the constant question our protagonist is faced with? "You are married and beautiful...how could you be unhappy?" Almost all of the characters in the film see this as a contradiction: how could she be beautiful as she is and unhappy?

Another contradiction that caught my eye was the husband's worry about his wife leaving for Tokyo. He leaves the house every day and doesn't think twice about it. But this house has become a source of contention and neglect for our protagonist. All she wants to do is leave it for a few days, and the husband thinks it's a huge deal.

The wife has every right to feel neglected, and in the end, this really is an excellent marital drama more than anything else (I guess that's obvious). Notice how the husband seems to give more attention to everything than his wife. It's not just his beautiful niece or social life with his co-workers, though. He's just too complacent of a soul, and this is his main shortcoming. He buys shoes and that's it! He owns great shoes. Notice the contrast between the new shoes and old ones. Those new shoes will eventually look old and worn like the old ones. His tie? Even his doting niece knows how raggedy it looks (a dig at the wife? for not maintaining her husband's look for him?). And of course, this married man has not been MAINTAINING his marriage in the same way that he has not maintained his wardrobe. He doesn't maintain the house at all when she leaves and it becomes incredibly messy!

One final contradiction greets us as the film ends. Michiyo finds out her husband has come to Tokyo and is visiting her. What does her mother say to her sister as she runs away? "She'll meet him when she's ready." But life isn't so neat and simple. She encounters him before she's truly ready. Life isn't simple and perfect. You don't get everything you want. But you cannot run away from your troubles, they must be dealt with. And at the end, they have both realized that. The husband, at the end, has a beer with his wife, not away from her.

"I wrote you a letter, but I didn't send it."
"Why not?"
And no answer. Because some of the hard parts of life have no answers. Why do we live as we do? Why do we feel the way we do? We just do.

[Michael Kerpan]

Enjoyed your comments on Repast. Ever since I first encountered this in 2002 or so, I've considered it the best film about "ordinary married life" ever made. "Grass is greener" is certainly a recurring motif in this. And learning to live (in equanimity) with unanswered (perhaps unanswerable) questions is definitely a theme.

[Drucker]

Not nearly as much to say about Sound Of The Mountain. As great as it is, not nearly as gripping or draining of a film as Repast. That said, still a wonderful and moving film.

The film really sticks out in contrast to Repast in so many ways. Early on, especially with the shot of the father staring at the sunflower, I had this film pegged as another film of time passing by adults with their children having one last episode with them. Apparently this might not be a crazy thought, since the portion of the commentary I listened to points out that the title and book do focus more on death than the film does. But Naruse doesn't let the film play out this way. Repast establishes what it'll be about pretty early on. But Sound Of The Mountain is a much different film.

I love how the film seems to flip so many other types of films. It's almost like an inverted Tokyo Story but even more so. These parents aren't wise and full of wisdom...they too are constantly prone to mistakes.

I really don't have too much more to say, but wanted to point these out:

-I loved the part where the father goes to confront the mistress at her house. The point is raised that this will "bring peace at home." And then Naruse cuts to a shot of just how peaceful home already is. His daughter-in-law and wife are just making the beds! That was a funny part to me.
-The commentary also points out that Ozu's films (do the comparisons between these two ever stop? It's hard not to see them in a similar light) are much more ambiguous than Naruse. That really stuck out to me. These characters' hopes, fears, and thoughts about most situations are explicitly stated.
-One of the more "how life is" lines for me was when the daughter-in-law goes to visit "a friend who is weak after childbirth." The way I took that to mean was that you are always weak after childbirth. If not physically, as a parent, life is full of exhausting moments being a parent.

Through it all, the father is trying his damnedest to do right by everyone in his extended family. But the film also seems to go out of its way to show how life and the times have really passed him by, and there's going to be a bit of futility to his efforts. His being befuddled by those "swinger" parties he's heard of would be my evidence for that.

One question: is the husband having an affair with his secretary as well as the pregnant woman? Or is it just the pregnant woman?

[Michael Kerpan]

It's almost like an inverted Tokyo Story but even more so. These parents aren't wise and full of wisdom

Actually, the closer the attention one pays to the parents in TS, the more one notices that they too have lots of issues...

When you read SotM (and you really should), it is more clear that the father-in-law is pretty selfish in many ways. He is fonder of his daughter-in-law than he is of almost anyone else -- but in part this is because she makes HIS life more pleasant. FWIW, the book goes past the point that the film ends on -- and is almost entirely presented from the father-in-law's viewpoint (where the movie features a lot more of the daughter-in-law's perspective).

[FerdinandGriffon]

The novel is also much more explicit about the erotic aspect of Shingo's interest in his daughter-in-law, something that I would argue is still there in the film but made almost subliminal (and beautifully so). The novel is also, you may be surprised to hear, heavy on dream sequences, including a truly outrageous one taking place in America and featuring a man with multiple, simultaneous styles of facial hair/beard.

The book is one of my very favorites, and the film equally so, as much for its restraint in choosing what to carry over to celluloid and what not to as for its ability to translate the things Naruse selects with subtlety and beauty. A model of adaptation.

[martin]

The possibility of a sexual relationship struck me as well when I wrote a mini review of the Naruse box on a Danish site 7 years ago. I wrote something along the lines of "Although it's never explicitly stated in the film, it's possible to see a sexual subtext in the father/daughter-in-law realationship". I haven't seen the film since, so it's difficult to go into details. I've never read the novel, by the way, so it's possible to arrive at this interpretation only by watching the film. But it's very subliminal.

[Michael Kerpan]

I suspect that Sound of the Mountains is one of the best film adaptations of a major novel -- ever. ;~}

[FerdinandGriffon]

I've never read the novel, by the way, so it's possible to arrive at this interpretation only by watching the film. But it's very subliminal.

Yeah, I saw the film before reading the novel, and felt the presence of the sexual subtext too, though the friends I'd seen it with thought I was crazy. I guess the most overt manifestation of it is the stuff about the noh mask; Shingo's fascination with it and its apparent resemblance to Kikuko is more than a little fetishistic, as if he could normalize or suppress his sexual admiration by displacing it onto an art object.

I'd also say that the sexual interest is, to some degree, mutual; Kikuko effectively replaces adored father for deadbeat son in almost every function of the role of her husband, and would seem willing to make the trade complete, if their situation would allow it, which of course it won't.

[Drucker]

Michael, something you wrote elsewhere on the forum really resonated me. To poorly paraphrase, something about how Ozu would probably be amused by the fact that people think of his work as incredibly high-art. Since then (which I read you write around the time I started appreciating his films, recently), I find his films to just be the most sublime, calm, beautiful family films.

But one thing that does stick out to me with Ozu is that he seems subversive with whom he chooses to make the wise person in his films. I've only seen a handful of his films at this point, but it's interesting that the idea of a wise elderly person never really appears. In The Only Son and Tokyo Story, the character who seems to see the world clearly and have a lot of clarity is in the younger generation. This isn't true of all of his films, but I feel like when watching an Ozu film, I imagine that his voice, the one speaking with the greatest clarity, is not the one who matches him in age. He likes to grant wisdom to the place you don't expect it. (I know this is a somewhat jumbled and inconsistent theory I have, but I've only seen half a dozen of his films. I hope to re-address this idea later as I watch more).

Sound Of A Mountain is profoundly misleading, because at it's surface, it seems cut and dry. Bad husband. Good wife. Negligent father. This is established early on and it would be so easy to resolve everything. Dad makes amends with daughter, etc. But again, like in Repast, we don't really have a resolution in the film. Life will go on, with many of the more difficult aspects of our character's lives still in place. There is no objective clarity that could make everyone's life easier if only they could see the truth, and the historical relationships between parent and child are so strongly rooted, it might be hard to imagine that true amends can be made. Again, we see a father who is trying to clean up his son's mess, rather than really let the son clean up his own mess. Is this only the latest example of short-sighted parenting from the father? Would he extend the same helping hand to his daughter? Sometimes life just is the way it is.

[Michael Kerpan]

I think that in Ozu one can find folly AND wisdom in almost any major character, he is remarkably even-handed. Naruse, while similar in many ways, does not provide redeeming characteristics to problematic characters quite so often. ;~}

Chishu Ryu really does appear as genuinely wise mentor in at least one Ozu film -- Early Spring -- where his character was a corporate up-and-comer who chose to step out of the rat race to take a posting in a provincial outpost so that he could actually have some semblance of family life. His character is not afraid to look "foolish" when following the course he finds best for himself and his family. As I recall, CR also plays a similar (albeit less conventional) mentor in Hen in the Wind.

The father-in-law in SotM is a mass of contradictions. He is innately selfish -- but with a sense of responsibility that kicks in reasonably often. The comparative callousness of he and his wife towards their own daughter (as opposed to their daughter-in-law) is pretty striking. One wonders what lies behind this (not sure even the novel really explains this).