Sunday, February 11, 2007

Schrader and the Transcendental Style - Ozu

I continue to work my way through Schrader's book, Transcendental Style in Film. It is dense, and requires rereading, and retouching of the films he is describing. I have Ozu's Tokyo Story and Late Spring next to my bed, so that I can go over his references.
Some more examples of Schrader's second part, Disparity.
Setsuko's Hora's tears near the end of Tokyo Story . I find this an interesting example, for the final sequence of the film, the ship going upriver.
The final codas of Ozu's films are reaffirmations of nature; they are the final silence and emptiness.

This would be part three of the form: stasis, "...which does not resolve the disparity but transcends it."
Another example of stasis at the end of Late Spring. Father and daughter have gone away for one last time together, before she is to be married. They discuss the day as they get ready for sleep. After a time, asking him a question and getting no response, she sees he is asleep. Ozu cuts back to the daughter seeing he is asleep. Then we see one of what Schrader's describes as Ozu's codas: the still shot of a vase. (It is not clear from our view of her if she has been looking at the vase from her bed. I suppose because it doesn't matter. We can only assume the vase is in the same room. That is all there is of realism).
Then Ozu returns to the daughter, now half-smiling. Then the vase again, this time a longer sequence. Then the daughter again, now nearly in tears.
And then the vase again.
The vase being stasis accepts seems to accept all these very different emotions and states "...and transform it into an expression of something unified, permanent, transcendent."

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