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I Was Born, But… /Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1932/1953)
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One of the great obsessives of world cinema, Yasujiro Ozu made films that are spare yet relentless studies of the Japanese family and its discontents. He learned early on that you can hide enormous emotional turmoil beneath an exceptionally placid surface, and the late films – particularly Tokyo Story, An Autumn Afternoon and the 1959 remake of Floating Weeds – are remarkable instances of minimal apparent effort yielding maximum emotional effect.
Cinematheque Ontario kicks off the year with the complete Ozu retrospective that has been touring festivals (it premiered at Berlin last year), and offers largely new, restored prints from Japanese sources. There isn’t the space to do justice to Ozu here, but the Cinematheque program begins Friday (January 16) with two of his greatest films that represent his early and late styles almost perfectly. (January 16-February 21, Cinematheque Ontario)
