"Be happy, and be a good wife" (Late Spring, Ozu, 1949)

"I love you, Luka. I don't need to do it in a white dress."
- Dialogue from "ER", season doesn't-matter-ever-since-Dr-Green-died

Every film Yasujiro Ozu makes seems to have the same feel: for sure, there are the consistently similar camera techniques (the cutaway "pillow shots", the "tatami" eye-levels, the static camera etc), but, far more than technique, there is also always a gentle sadness to his work that gets me everytime: gentle because his films generally revolve around a fairly ordinary situation, never slow but always unhurried, and, although deeply emotional, never impassioned or angry or stormy, and, most importantly, never displayed openly or with any kind of wilful disregard. And sadness because those emotions are never displayed openly or with any kind of wilful disregard, so tears get drowned in sake, run down faces bowed in the darkness, or hurriedly wiped away at the eye as soon as someone walks into the room.

All these apply to Late Spring, which, I have to say, reflects a terribly familiar refrain in my life at this point, where everybody around me is either marrying and/or reproducing and enquiring with persistent annoyance about the state of my own/others' marital status. I must admit the scene with Norika (Setsuko Hara) and her friend/classmate Aya (Yumeji Tsukioka) where the latter reels off all the marriage slash baby statuses of their mutual friends (happy, legitimate or otherwise) particularly resonates with me. Upon turning thirty this year, I have discovered that at this age marriage and babies suddenly become achievements of such importance that people seem incapable of talking about anything else, and I can't say it is a terribly happy discovery, nor particularly exciting.

In any case, Noriko - as the plot of Late Spring goes - is propelled into the inevitable chain, and by and by she is nudged into a marriage which she does not particularly want - she is happy as she is, she is not particularly wild about the guy, she has no real desire to get married, she is aware she isn't really pleasing anybody other than "society" (made up in this case of an aunt, a remarried uncle and sentiments trotted out by Aya and her father which could not sound more like mouthpiece-rhetoric if they tried). But her path had been laid out as early as the first dramatic shot, where we see Noriko enter a room full of women, and she kneels and bows formally to them as they return the gesture - we see a society ruled so strongly by ceremonial conduct and formal custom that we can only conclude (as perhaps does she) that she never really had a choice.

Which leads me to one of my favourite questions: do we really have choices? About marriage - who to marry, when to marry, why we marry? We see so many concrete actions in Late Spring just to bring about Noriko's marriage - the aunt's efforts to match-make, her persistent visits to get Noriko to say yes, Aya's exhortations that all women must marry, not least of all the father's own terrible deception to persuade Noriko to leave him - it really makes one wonder. So why do we do it? In what I felt was the most incredible scene in the film, and very easily one of the most moving scenes I have ever watched, Noriko's father (Chishu Ryu) explains to her why marriage will make her happy. It is a fairly long monologue for someone who spends the whole film barely stringing together anything more than 3 consecutive sentences and, in his own way, he is eloquent, he is logical. But we also realise he has no clue either, despite his age and his own marriage to Noriko's mother: we do it because we have to, and you just have to close your eyes and jump with alot of faith and hope like hell that you will be happy twenty years from now.

They say Journey to Italy is the best film ever made about marriage, but I think Late Spring is the best film ever made about getting married. Both are tough, but I think the latter requires a little more wisdom, a little more insight, a little more prescience. Because the latter is where it all starts. And when we have to struggle to explain even that, it does not give one much confidence for the journey ahead.