Critics reviews

Watching it again a few weeks ago, I realized that on the first go I had absorbed almost none of the plot. Only on second viewing did I remember anything—and then only because I recognized the speech patterns of a certain character, a grandfather who comes with his wife to visit his children. His verbal tics brought not just the plot but the film's patient and peculiar beauty back to me in a rush.

In Good Morning, Ozu is always showing us the entire film simultaneously: This is a rigorously controlled, structured, and theoretical work that also resounds with the warm and spontaneous vitality of life—a seemingly paradoxical achievement that exists as a peak of cinematic artistry.

Devoted to both the profound necessity and the sublime silliness of social interchange, Good Morning is therefore much subtler and grander than it might initially appear to be. Commonly identified as a remake of Ozu's silent 1932 masterpiece I Was Born, But . . ., also included in this release, it is even more interesting for its differences with that film than for its similarities—above all, the difference between what a father's authority meant in prewar versus postwar Japan.

In Good Morning, it's a treat to see the same low angles that Ozu employed for tearful adult dramas adapted for a buoyant family comedy. His close-to-the-floor shots showcase the siblings as formidable low comedians, whether they're farting on request or communicating only with a high sign. Ozu applies a glancing satiric touch to adult small talk and reflex phrases like "good morning" (hence the title), but the action always hinges on goods bought and sold.

The bland title refers to the surface sociability of adults' small talk that the boys find repellent; Ozu uses their silence as a shattering reproach to a society that runs on the insincerity of convention—and their blunt aggression as a reproach to sincerity. The opening shots of this 1959 comic drama... seem straight out of Jacques Tati but actually belong to the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, whose sense of generational conflict in a society at risk from within is here at its sharpest and most anarchic.

Ozu's masterfully executed intertwining of plot elements suggests a society of "interdependent yet insulated busybodies." But this is a much lighter affair than Ozu's melodramatic masterworks, and his societal critiques are kept at arms' distance in favor of the story.

Ozu takes a whimsical yet socially astute commentary on formality, etiquette, and consumerism in Ohayo. Through the children's perspective, polite conversation is a meaningless exercise in civility. Yet, through the course of the film, speech becomes an indispensable means for conveying thought, profound emotion, and resolving misunderstandings... Inevitably, communication proves to be the most effective means of social interaction - the indispensable, universal key to all human relationships.

An enchanting update of Ozu's own silent I Was Born, But..., dedicated to the proposition that small talk, however tedious and repetitious, is a necessary lubricant for the wheels of social intercourse... A brimming sense of life gradually transforms the small talk into a richly devious portrait of humanity being human.

Teacup tempests are usually not enough – it depends upon how much cream and sugar are added. Ozu, however, dispenses with both and, adding lemon, has created one of the funniest indictments of Japanese suburban life since Kinoshita's horrid family stormed and romped its way across the screen in the 1957 Fuzen no Tomoshibi (Candle in the Wind). What is more, Ozu and scenarist Kogo Noda – who have worked together since 1927 – have created a completely charming comedy of Japanese manners.