Ozu the Antichrist
Damn it that was going to be the name of my directorial debut. Hopefully no one takes it.
One shouldn´t take too seriously what Sion Sono says.
I think he’s serious in disliking Ozu, or at least Ozu’s influence, though that doesn’t mean we have to. Another excerpt from the interview:
“SS: This is basically Japanese movies. Almost all Japanese movies are about families, about couples, about getting married, about the bond of parents, sons and daughters. Ozu’s – all including Japanese films. So I don’t like this. Yes, always I’m interested in families and Noriko’s Dinner Table is about families…So…Love Exposure too. And, ah…but the contemporary family, almost all aren’t that peaceful or close – they’re broken. Every day parents kill children, children kill parents. We always hear this news. It’s not Ozu’s world. But Japanese movies are in the tradition of Ozu’s family. The peaceful family. The lovely family. They always make these movies. Peaceful family. Lovely couple. This is not real.
“3:AM: You think Ozu’s films are irrelevant?
“SS: Yes.”
He seems to be reacting against the fact that Ozu’s films are held up by many Japanese for their family values, reinforcing dominant trends in mainstream domestic Japanese film.
i think someone should ask Sono what’s wrong with optimism once in a while…
My guess is that this punk doesn’t have the chops to have worked the clapper board on an Ozu shoot.
Ozu families are peaceful? On the surface maybe.
I love Love Exposure but Sono’s just being deliberately provocative in that predictable “let’s slay sacred cows” kind of way. As if there aren’t enough Japanese films that show parents killing children or children killing parents or ghosts killing children or monster dogs killing babies, ad nauseum.
And you would be right.
Sono subscribes to a very simplistic view of Ozu.
“As if there aren’t enough Japanese films that show parents killing children or children killing parents or ghosts killing children or monster dogs killing babies, ad nauseum.”
For Westerners Japan can often seem like the site of all things fucked-up. Sion however is speaking from a Japanese perspective—when he says that “all Japanese movies are about families, about couples, about getting married, about the bond of parents, sons and daughters” he’s speaking from the vantage point of someone within a specific culture, one where Ozu is (according to him) held up as the sort of model for family stories. It raises the issue of how Ozu is ideologically seen and co-opted in Japan, and whether his status there can seem like a negative example for current Japanese filmmakers. Those issue are ultimately separate from the actual quality of Ozu’s films, which few here would deny.
This guy Sono is in the same bind that right wing radio commentators in America are in.
Thier audience either doesn’t care about ideas or can’t grasp ideas. What they need is ever increasing does of shock and excess the way a portion of the contemporary film audience needs to have the shock level turned up to snap them out of their coma now and again.
Many say Ozu is uniquely Japanese but to me the theme of a culture reacting to change is a universal theme even if the particulars vary.
Now if presenting a universal idea in an extremely innovative film language is a negative example then I have no idea what this homeboy Sono is on about except possibly his own self promotion.
That’s ridiculous. Ozu’s films aren’t about the happy perfect family. They’re about the family being dissolved, and broken apart. I hardly think the families Sion Sono is talking about are in the majority. It’s can easily be argued that Hirokazu Kore-eda is the current Japanese director that takes the most influence from Ozu… look at his films about the family… in one a father commits suicide, and the mother marries again into a relationship of convenience. In another there is no father, four kids, and a mother who abondons them the moment she finds a boyfriend. How is that a picturesque view of the Japanese family?
Sion does subscribe to a very simplistic view of Ozu. One where he’s viewing the Japanese family as perfect… that childishly basic. He’s completely misrepresenting Ozu’s entire oeuvre.
Uh, no. Enough said.
I think what Sono may be saying is that Ozu’s sympathies are on the side of tradition and he finds them to be politically conservative as a result. That has been a fairly common criticism of Ozu so it’s not like he’s making a wild accusation (he’s just making it in polemical terms). So, yes, Ozu’s films are about the dissolution of the Japanese family but Sono could argue that they are from the perspective of nostalgia with sympathy towards the older generation. I think that’s also simplistic since you can point to film’s like Equinox Flower which gives a critique of the older generation but I can see why you can make such a comment. On the other hand, Love Exposure, Sono’s magnum opus, is also about the breakdown of the family but his anti-nostalgic and anti-tradition sympathies lie clearly with the younger generation.
IA, I have no idea what you are saying in your response to my comment…I was just responding to Sono’s statement that seems to suggest Japanese films don’t depict the darker sides of Japanese society.
I think that Sono stands for a kind of rebellion that completely ingnores everything labelled classical and therefore doesn´t even make the effort to understand directors like Ozu basing his criticism on prejustices. The New Wave directors of the 60s and 70s knew perfectly against what they were rebelling and tried to break down fixed patterns, but those post-modern directors like Sono are simply confused and don´t really know what they´re saying. That doesn´t mean that he´s not able to make some interesting films, but he will never even come close to Ozu´s profoundness while analyzing a society superficially.
Ozu is NOT on the side of tradition, as “The Record of a Tenement Gentleman” makes clear.
“I think what Sono may be saying is that Ozu’s sympathies are on the side of tradition and he finds them to be politically conservative as a result. That has been a fairly common criticism of Ozu so it’s not like he’s making a wild accusation…”
As Mr. Ehrenstein points out this is an incorrect view of Ozu’s career. Not just in Record of a Tenenment Gentleman, but also in Tokyo Twilight, and Equinox Flower. All of those films question the traditional views on society… in fact almost all of his late films do. Late Spring is essentially questioning arranged marriage. The daughter winds up unhappy, and the father winds up alone… how is that siding with tradition? This is an extremely shallow view of Ozu’s career.
Replies to various points from various people:
- Sono is not a mere shock artist-his latest film has after all received coverage in the Auteur’s Notebook of all places. Not a plaudit reserved for directors who analyze a society superficially.
—The question of Koreda’s influences is an interesting one. At a Q&A for Still Walking Koreda was asked about Ozu. He replied that the greater influence on the film was that of Naruse.
-Ari: what I was trying to say was that to a Western audience Japan seems to crank an endless stream of fucked-up movies (not all of which are critical of the family), but to someone within Japan itself this may not be an accurate picture of the cultural landscape. The serene (even in conflict or when critical) family story taken from/inspired by Ozu-and apparently still popular—may seem more oppressive and culturally prevalent to a Japanese filmmaker like Sono, who claims that foreigners like his films whereas Japanese hate them. It raises the issue of how much Ozu is has been conservatively co-opted in Japan, and whether young filmmakers feel the need to escape from his influence.
—I love Ozu as much as the next man on this forum, so I hope no one will think I am taking Sono’s side, rather than explaining why he might have it.
“He replied that the greater influence on the film was that of Naruse.”
So? Ozu has undoubtedly influenced his career (more than maybe any other current Japanese director), and that statement completely avoids my point. In fact, I’ve heard Still Walking is the film in which he has the most picturesque view of the Japanese family. Maborosi, Nobody Knows, and Distance all show deep fissures within the Japanese family (maybe without killing babies, and parents, but still…), and all of them share a deep stylistic, and thematic influence from Ozu (as well as many other sources).
Sono seems to be complaining because he’s disliked… so was Kurosawa. So is Hong Sangsoo, and Tsai Ming-liang, and Hou Hsiao-hsien today in their home countries. Directors who present a difficult view of their homeland are often disliked by their home audience. It seems extremely childish to blame that on other directors for not making films more like his.
Josh, I am not trying to avoid your point. But I was suggesting, that just as the questioner was sure Ozu was the dominant influence on Koreda’s film until she was contradicted, that the nature of a specific influence can seem like a sure thing when it actually isn’t. This doesn’t mean that I discount Ozu’s undoubted influence on Koreda.
I don’t think Sono is childishly blaming Ozu for not making films more like his. I think he resents Ozu’s work for reinforcing a culturally prevalent and maybe even oppressive set of expectations in Japan that influences the reception of his work in Japan. Sono’s view of Ozu’s work is obviously simplistic and exaggerated, and should hardly be viewed as a penetrating takedown of the director. But it may say a great deal about how Ozu is viewed by the mainstream in Japan, and I think that is the most interesting issue raised by his comments.
Glad you cited thsoe tohers, Josh. Ozu is a very complex and multi-facted filmmkaer. His critical reputation couldn’t be higher. But along with it is a tendency to see his films as peas-in-a-pod family dramas. They really don’t work that way. And there is a LOT of social protest in Ozu besides.
The world Ozu was describing in his family films was vanishing — and today there’s nothing left of it. Obviously the prestige Ozu cquired may annoy a younger generation, but there’s room for all. it should be noted that when Ozu was shooting his last film “The Taste of Autumn Mackrel,” Oshima in the very same studio was shooting “Night and Fog in Japan.”
I’d hate to contribute any more attention to this idiotic charlatan’s comments, but it’s hard for me to resist defending the honor of one of cinema’s best. Who am I to say he’s great, Jim Jarmusch, Wim Wenders and Paul Schrader have cited Ozu as the evil overlord who has tremendously influenced their diabolical craftsmanship.
If Ozu = Evil, Sion Sony Bono or whatever your name is = nobody.
All hail Xenu.
As I understand it Ozu is unknown to the mainstream in Japan. He was forgotten in Japan by at least the 1980’s. In Wim Wender’s 1983 documentary “Tokyo-ga” he points out that Chishu Ryu is famous in Japan not because he worked with Ozu, but because he was a star on a T.V. show at the time of the filming of that movie. If he’s concerned about his popular reputation in Japan he should look elsewhere. Ozu may be popular in the circles he hangs out with, but he’s delusional if he thinks Ozu is still a reigning cultural force swaying the hearts and minds of the Japanese people.
An apt comparison would be if a popular American filmmaker blamed a critical, and commercial flop on Orson Welles. It holds no water. If he’s hated by the majority in Japan it’s not because of Ozu.
David, I think it’s one thing to acknowledge (as I did) that Ozu’s films are more nuanced than the critique of him as being a conservative “family values” type that he is sometimes painted as (and that Sono’s comment pigeonholes him in). On the other hand, to maintain that “there is a LOT of social protest in Ozu” is going way overboard. There is something to that critique of him (it is not simply “incorrect,” Josh). I think Ozu was a traditionalist at heart. I don’t think that can be denied. I think he was nostalgic for the era that was passing. And I think Japanese filmmakers have wrestled with his legacy and – as Sono’s comment reveals – still wrestling with that. Sono is one of the most interesting filmmakers of the new millennium. Just because he insulted your cinematic God, doesn’t make him any less of a filmmaker.
I think the book below addresses Ozu’s legacy within Japan (and in some ways it might frame or even directly influence Sono’s comment).
http://www.midnighteye.com/books/ozu-anti-cinema.shtml
There are a lot of social protests in Ozu’s films. Tokyo Twilight is one giant social protest, so is I Was Born, But…, Woman of Tokyo, Good Morning, even his most famous films are protesting social norms. Just because characters resign themselves to the traditional setting in most of his films doesn’t mean Ozu agrees with that perspective.
Example…
Compare the ending of Late Spring to Early Summer. Most would say they’re very similar stories. There is one (much more than one, but for our purposes one) major difference. In Late Spring they go by tradition and no one winds up happy, in Early Summer the daughter defies tradition, and, though, she splits up the family by doing so the film ends on a very upbeat note. In every film where characters resign themselves to following the traditional ways the ending is always sadder, and full of much more quiet despair than in the films where characters defy their father, or brother, or entire family. That is what Ozu is saying. It’s subtle, but there is a whole lot of social protesting going on in Ozu’s films.
It’s not social protest but social critique. And Ozu’s critique of contemporary society was largely that from the perspective of a traditionalist. I don’t see how you can deny that. Luckily, I have Donald Richie’s Ozu book sitting on my shelf and I can pull it out. Here’s a choice quote:
“There is never any doubt where Ozu’s essential sympathies lies (ME: referring to the parents/older generation).. and for this reason some young Japanese have disliked his work, calling him old-fashioned, bourgeois, reactionary. And so he would appear, since he so continually celebrates those very qualities, the traditional virtues of their country, against which young Japanese must revolt.”
Richie wrote this in 1979 but I think it contextualizes and explains Sono’s quote quite nicely. Richie offers a more sympathetic account of Ozu than this (and in some ways falls closer to your point of view than Sono’s) but I still think it’s relevant here since you seem to deny this point of view entirely.
Well Ritchie, like Ozu, is gay. And for all the work Ritchie has done in introducting Japanese cinema to the West he fails to relate how Ozu was a marginal figure within his own country.
There is a very good reason that Ozu postions his camera OUTSIDE THE DOOR.
For that’s where he was.
What is this, the National Enquirer? Ozu’s sexuality, as far as I know, is ambiguous at best yet you’re circulating unsubstantiated rumors as facts? Or are you going to also argue that Ozu positioned his camera from inside closets as well?
That means Ozu is not just evil, but also gay. A revelatory thread…
Ozu was almost kicked out of his school for propositioning another male student, and was never married, and lived with his mother for his entire life. In the very least Ozu was very repressed sexually.
I’ve read that book, Ari, and you’re taking the quote completely out of context. If you keep reading Ritchie goes on to say that the perspective you just stated is a shallow one. Younger generations dislike him because they don’t understand his work, that was the point of his quote.
I’m not taking the quote out of context, Josh. I acknowledged that Richie gives a more sympathetic account of Ozu and even said that he falls more in line with what you’re arguing. I didn’t say that this was Richie’s position but that of younger Japanese filmmakers (and, by default, Sono’s which is why the quote is relevant). On the other hand, Richie does argue that Ozu was a traditionalist. That much is clear and I think indisputable.
As for Ozu’s sexuality, let’s just cite from the NY Times:
“Some people think he was gay, but no one is sure,” she continued. “He was expelled from his high school for sending a love letter to another male student, but it was an all-boys’ high school, and we don’t know whether it was a serious letter or just a joke.” What is known, she said, is that Ozu was “a very moralistic person.”
IA
From an interview with Sion Sono:
“I don’t like Yasujirō Ozu. In Japan I hate Yasujirō Ozu. Everyone likes him but… because Ozu’s a god of Japanese movies. The Anti-god. The Antichrist.”
Link to full interview here: http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/channeling-chaos-an-interview-with-sion-sono/
(Excerpt posted for amusement and not out of any negative feelings toward Ozu the Antichrist.)