Good Morning (1959)

directed by Yasujirō Ozu

Japan

95 minutes

5 stars out of 5

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It's been a really long time since I've watched an Ozu film. I put this on spur of the moment within an hour of waking up because I found out that Yoshiko Kuga died. (Tonight I'm probably watching Zero Focus or something.) I have osmosed some information about Ozu and his works just from being heavily interested in Showa-era Japanese cinema in general, and I have to say that every time I watch something of his I wonder why I ever watch anything else. The cinematography in his films is unparalleled: the blocking is phenomenal; characters seem nested within boxes of their own making, little comfortable microcosms of modern living that they are continuing to perpetuate through their own actions. Conflict between generations is a huge theme running throughout Ozu's oeuvre, and while Good Morning is on the surface a lighthearted film, there is still that streak of anxiety in it.

Synopses will tell you that Good Morning is about Isamu and Minoru, two boys who enact a strike in response to their parents' refusal to buy them a television. This is true, but it's also true that there is so much else going on in this film. The fascinating thing about it, and what gives it such a unique feel, is that every issue is treated with exactly the same emotional weight. Each character has something going on, and sometimes it's just random background life problems: did my neighbor forget to pay the dues for our women's group? How do I get this salesman to leave me alone? My mother is annoying. My kids are being a pain. But at other times - in fact, not even "at other times", these deeper issues are always encapsulated within the "surface-level" ones - it gets more devastating.

To the adults of the film, Isamu and Minoru are simply being brats because they don't understand the real world and how it works. The boys complain that adults just say the same things all the time: "good morning", "good afternoon", "how are you", and so on. Empty platitudes. The adults counter that, well, that's just the way it is. They don't even realize that there could be any other way to be. By telling these children, who are questioning the social order of things, to accept that things are the way they are because they just are, to be obedient, quiet, and participate in the same meaningless small talk as the adults around them, they are unwittingly trapping them in a cycle and taking away the tools of subversion and dissent that might aid them in escaping it.

The film is set in a complicated arrangement of houses that are in very close proximity to each other. All of the neighbors have their own private thing going on, but the physical closeness of them means one person's business becomes everyone else's. Kuga plays one of these neighbors, a young woman named Setsuko with an admirer who she seems oblivious of. I think the last thing I saw her in was Thus Another Day and her role here could not be more different. She exudes warmth and cheerfulness (and my god, those heels she wears) and, although her character is ultimately another adult who doesn't concern herself overmuch with the two rebellious boys, she does treat them as people.

I think the boy playing Isamu (Masahiko Shimazu, who was fairly prolific as a child actor but did not seem to have any roles past the early 1960s) is the star of the show here. Isamu is basically a little adult - and, for the reasons I've been talking about, he is in many ways more mature and understanding than the real adults. He takes himself, his brother, and their struggle wholly seriously, but also engages in childish behavior; although, again, everything he does, whether meant to be funny or not, is given equal weight. Shimazu's performance is incredibly endearing but also remarkably level-headed for a child that small.

As much as there's a well of intergenerational conflict and anxiety about modernization at the heart of this film, it's also so genuinely sweet and lovely that it almost made me tear up. This is possibly the only movie I've ever seen to have this many fart jokes yet never once feel awkward to watch. And Ozu seems to understand children on a deep level, but he also understands why the things they do make older people nervous.

I am a little bit stuck in a rut of knowing what I like to watch and pursuing only that instead of exploring other genres and styles. This isn't the kind of thing I watch very often these days but it's an incredibly beautiful film and has definitely made me want to get further into Ozu.

Technically has a tokusatsu connection as somebody mentions Gekkō Kamen at one point.