• 生まれてはみたけれど (I Was Born, But…)

11/19/20 (Thurs)

Ozu honed his craft in the silent era, and this 1932 film, coming at the tail end of that period, is one of the most lauded of all his works. Highly acclaimed from the start – it won the prestigious Kinema Junpo Award as the year’s Best Film – it remains a critical favorite.

Two boys struggle to fit in to their new neighborhood in the Tokyo suburbs and are bullied by the local kids. Avoiding school at first, they eventually win the kids over by turning the tables and threatening the bullies on their own turf. However, they become disillusioned when they perceive that their father is sucking up to his boss, who happens to be the father of one of the bullies. They accuse him of degrading himself. Their father, hurt, explains that this is the way of the world for those at the bottom of the social scale, noting that it is his efforts that are feeding them and sending them to school. In the humane trajectory of all Ozu films, all come to realize that life involves compromise, and the boys ultimately gain sympathy and understanding for their hard-working father.

The story is engaging if rather trivial in the first half, but digs much deeper when the kids cringe at their dad’s clowning as he watches a home movie with the boss. The dialogue titles were kept nicely to a minimum, most of the talk being perfectly clear from the context. The director apparently recycled elements of the story into Good Morning more than a quarter century later, but I don’t see what sound could have added (I even turned off the irritating score). Ozu says more in silence than most films say in reams of dialogue; silence is truly golden here.

The acting in general was restrained and natural. The main boys in particular, aged 8 and 10, gave unusually confident performances for their age. I especially loved the way the younger child aped the actions of his older brother, who he clearly adores. The only irritant was their crying, shown by raising their fists mechanically and unconvincingly to their eyes with elbows elevated perpendicularly in a Kabuki-like manner. What was that about? That aside, they carried the film, even among a strong cast. The plaudits for this movie are well deserved.