01-25-2025, 02:25 PM
I recently revisited one of my favorite movies, Floating Weeds, directed by Yasujiro Ozu, one of only four movies he shot in color. It's otherwise said to be typical of the Ozu style. I want to talk about it because its philosophy and purpose as a movie is very rare. I'm sure there are would-be Ozus out there today. But even a seemingly simple movie like Floating Weeds is a group project that takes a big crew of people and significant financial investment to make, and there doesn't seem to be much motivation for studios to invest in this kind of work. And that's unfortunate for me because it's my favorite kind of movie.
The story is very simple. It's a kind of melodrama about a washed-up kabuki troupe taking up a summer residency in a small seaside town; there the aging head of the troupe reconnects with a long-ago mistress and his secret adolescent son, causing deep insult to his current girlfriend and business partner in the troupe. But the story is not really the point. Ozu worked within a set of self-imposed creative constraints that emphasized visual composition and allowing scenes to play out in real time over narrative urgency, dramatic tension, or even shot-to-shot continuity. In an Ozu movie, the camera remains still in every shot. There are no pans, zooms, wipes, or fades. No time is understood to pass during cuts within a scene; if someone is climbing a flight of stairs, it takes a realistic amount of time for then to do it even if it means there are a few seconds where they've walked off-screen and there's no other action to look at. When time is understood to pass between scenes, they are often separated by a couple of unpopulated location shots—a mosquito coil burning in an empty room, a banner flapping in the breeze, and so on—which bookend narrative moments like the falling and rising of a curtain on a stage as the backdrop and actors are exchanged. The Criterion Collection commissioned an audio commentary on the movie from critic Roger Ebert, who explains that Ozu believed that every single shot of the movie should be composed like a compelling photograph, to the point that he would manually rearrange objects on screen between shots so they would remain geometrically harmonious from different angles, with no regard for the continuity of their placement within the scene. This was the first thing I noticed when I watched Floating Weeds for the first time—not that I was keeping track of these discontinuities, but I noticed that any given frame of the movie was a great photograph.
Somehow, within all these constraints, and without a lot of Hollywood conventions that Ozu studied but rejected in his own work, like the "180 degree rule" or a clear narrative purpose for every moment, the movie tells its story with total clarity. The movie remains interesting, engaging, and beautiful without ever becoming tense or exciting. Ebert's commentary explains this, and basically everything else I noticed and loved about the movie, much more eloquently in his commentary:
The overall effect of Ozu's method is that the viewer has the opportunity to appreciate the beauty of unremarkable places and ordinary, often flawed people.
![[Image: floating-weeds-04.jpg]](https://hamster.dance/assets/img/2025/01/floating-weeds-04.jpg)
![[Image: floating-weeds-08.jpg]](https://hamster.dance/assets/img/2025/01/floating-weeds-08.jpg)
![[Image: floating-weeds-10.jpg]](https://hamster.dance/assets/img/2025/01/floating-weeds-10.jpg)
![[Image: floating-weeds-20.jpg]](https://hamster.dance/assets/img/2025/01/floating-weeds-20.jpg)
The story is very simple. It's a kind of melodrama about a washed-up kabuki troupe taking up a summer residency in a small seaside town; there the aging head of the troupe reconnects with a long-ago mistress and his secret adolescent son, causing deep insult to his current girlfriend and business partner in the troupe. But the story is not really the point. Ozu worked within a set of self-imposed creative constraints that emphasized visual composition and allowing scenes to play out in real time over narrative urgency, dramatic tension, or even shot-to-shot continuity. In an Ozu movie, the camera remains still in every shot. There are no pans, zooms, wipes, or fades. No time is understood to pass during cuts within a scene; if someone is climbing a flight of stairs, it takes a realistic amount of time for then to do it even if it means there are a few seconds where they've walked off-screen and there's no other action to look at. When time is understood to pass between scenes, they are often separated by a couple of unpopulated location shots—a mosquito coil burning in an empty room, a banner flapping in the breeze, and so on—which bookend narrative moments like the falling and rising of a curtain on a stage as the backdrop and actors are exchanged. The Criterion Collection commissioned an audio commentary on the movie from critic Roger Ebert, who explains that Ozu believed that every single shot of the movie should be composed like a compelling photograph, to the point that he would manually rearrange objects on screen between shots so they would remain geometrically harmonious from different angles, with no regard for the continuity of their placement within the scene. This was the first thing I noticed when I watched Floating Weeds for the first time—not that I was keeping track of these discontinuities, but I noticed that any given frame of the movie was a great photograph.
Somehow, within all these constraints, and without a lot of Hollywood conventions that Ozu studied but rejected in his own work, like the "180 degree rule" or a clear narrative purpose for every moment, the movie tells its story with total clarity. The movie remains interesting, engaging, and beautiful without ever becoming tense or exciting. Ebert's commentary explains this, and basically everything else I noticed and loved about the movie, much more eloquently in his commentary:
Quote:I've seen Floating Weeds lots of times over the last fifteen or twenty years. I don't grow tired of it because its mood lulls me and brings me into a reverie in which I contemplate the lives of the characters and the truth that underlies them about all human life. I'm not waiting for big climactic moments or sensational shots. I'm existing in time and space with other people.
The overall effect of Ozu's method is that the viewer has the opportunity to appreciate the beauty of unremarkable places and ordinary, often flawed people.