Reorienting Ozu: A Master and His Influence ed. by Jinhee Choi (review)

Abstract

Like other historical figures, filmmakers tend to be slotted into perhaps restrictive historiographical niches. Yasujiro Ozu now stands as one of the most acclaimed writer-directors of the twentieth century, with his 1953 film Tokyo Story (Tokyo monogatari) safely nestled in the top five of Sight & Sound’s influential “The Greatest Films of All Time” survey. Yet his overall work seems to suffer from categorical oversimplification; his famous “tatami shot” films are said to embody a Flaubertian filmic representation of domestic familial life, as contrasted to the grandiose, more Tolstoyian interpretation of the world, as exhibited by Ozu’s Japanese contemporary, Akira Kurosawa. A closer look at both filmmakers’ work, however, reveals a more protean reality: Ozu also made comedies, while Kurosawa diversified with literary adaptations (The Idiot) and crime dramas (Drunken Angel). This book tries to remedy this situation through its multifarious viewpoints of Ozu, and it mostly succeeds. Reorienting Ozu is divided into three parts: “Branding Ozu,” which encompasses contemporary theoretical and discursive frameworks about the Japanese filmmaker; “Historicizing Ozu,” which examines overlooked films in Ozu’s oeuvre; and “Tracking Ozu,” which identifies his influence on contemporary filmmakers. The first section represents the weakest part in reorienting its subject. While the first four chapters, which explain the recent examinations of Ozu’s work by Japanese critic Shigehiko Hasumi and the conscious homage in Taiwanese filmmaker Hsaio-hsien Hou’s Café Lumiere (2003), demonstrate that an overemphasis on