Thursday, August 25, 2005
I think the best way to spend my recovery from my recent brain surgery is to watch DVDs. But then what would you expect. But really, leaning forward is counterindicated for me - it causes pressure which leads to headaches; so leaning back for a couple of hours while a good film unspools is just what the doctor ordered: "Watch two movies and call me in the morning."
When I first rotated out after a week in the hospital, I was in the mood for Japanese films. I started with the first disc of Kinji Fukasaku's The Yakuza Papers - Battles without Honor & Humanity. It was good, but I think I needed humanity and maybe even honor; so I made the switch to Ozu.
Yasujiro Ozu's films are mostly about battles with humanity and honor, but the battles are inside the characters. There is seldom any violence or even much motion. The inner struggles mostly have to do with making decisions which will threaten to bring about the inevitable dissolution of a family (either sanguinary or metaphorical.)
Since the recent beginning of this new century, my wife and I have lost all four parents; so the subject of the dissolution of the family is never far from us. My nearly one year facing what to do about my macroadenoma of the pituitary gland has prompted much contemplation of my own death. It seems the sure hands of a talented surgeon have delivered me from my fears, but the inevitability of change remains in my brain.
I had alreaady acquired Ozu's End of Summer from Amazon UK. (It's not available here, yet.) Often when I get a DVD, even one I have waited years to be released, I will hold onto to it, waiting for the "right time" to watch it. Also, sharing with others is something I like to do - it makes me feel a little less guilty about the big screen TV and the cost of a DVD, if more people are entertained. So my wife and two friends joined me for a movie night. I'm not sure how fascinating everyone else found it, but the gentle rhythms of Ozu's charcters: an extended family struggling with making decisions about marriage, responsibility, family ties, and mortality; was a tonic for me.
I read in the paper the next day that Ozu's Tokyo Story has been selected by hundreds of critics as the best film in the history of the world. Hmmm.
This year will be the first in nearly 20 that I will not attend the Telluride Film Festival. It grieves me to miss this annual rite, and to miss the immersion in new and exciting films. So, I am having my own personal Ozu fest here. Such an endeavor requires a little international commerece. The Criterion Collection has started releasing special editions of several by the master: Tokyo Story, Early Summer, Stories of Floating Weeds - these are all readily obtainable from Amazon among other sources.
Amazon UK offers a couple of sets from Tartan : Ozu Volume One: Late Spring / Early Summer / Tokyo Story (Noriko Trilogy) and Ozu Volume Two: Record of a Tenement Gentleman / Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice.
From there, it's time to got to ebay. About a dozen more titles can be found available from Hong Kong reputedly featuring English subtitles. We'll see - they are headed this way now. The trick to this is you need a DVD player that can play the shiny discs from all over the world. That should be the beauty of DVD: it is a technology that unites the world by making all cinemas from Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas readily accessible to all. The cultures of the planet are a smorgasbord just waiting to be sampled. But. Sinister movie corporations demanded that the machines here have built in blocking devices to prevent all this cinematic world peace and understanding. Isn't that always the way?
But a region free machine can be had. And for barely more than that ultra cheap model, the world can be yours. A little search on Amazon reveals many models to choose from.
More about Ozufest 2005 coming soon.
