I Lived, But . . .

                            
Director: Kazuo Inoue
Year: 1983
Rating: 7.5
A two-hour documentary from Japanese director Kazuo Inoue. As I slowly wade into Ozu, I thought it might help to understand his films if I had a better understanding of him, his methods, his style and his life. Few directors are held in such respect from critics and other directors. If anything, he is much better known today than he was during his lifetime. I am still dwelling in his pre-War films so I have a ways to go before I get to what is considered distilled Ozu. This was a terrific documentary that  went into his biography of course but his life wasn't particularly dramatic. There seemed to be no scandals, no low points, no love affairs so it is the films that matter and that is the focus of this documentary.




There are some terrific interviews with actors and others who worked with Ozu and lots of clips from his films. What you get out of all that is that Ozu was loved by all who worked for him and that he loved staying up late drinking sake. With everyone it seems. He was a party guy as long as the party was around a table with sake available. People talk about his sense of humor and how he loved to tease which sort of went against what I thought he would be like. His long hound face always looks so dour. But when it came to film making he was very exact, very controlling, knew exactly what he wanted and would do take after take till he got it. Ozu would tell his actors precisely what he wanted them to do - box them in - he would say if an actor did his own interpretation it would always be the wrong one.




Even scenes such as a woman raising a cup of tea to drink and giving a line of dialogue would have 20 retakes. He would tell them you do it differently every time - I want you to do it the exact same way every time. Then what is the point of 20 retakes? Because you are not getting it right. His camera work was the same - he would set up the camera just as he wanted and tell everyone not to touch it. He would meticulously make sure everything in the frame and the background was just right and would move around pictures or plates till it satisfied him.




And of course the content of his films - especially his post-War (Ozu was drafted and served in China) films in which nearly all of them dealt with family, husbands and wives and their children, about the nature of life moving forward - your children leaving you, of getting married, of leaving your parents, of being lonely and finally dying. His films focus on this in the most simplistic of ways but also the most focused and emotional. After his first film, Ozu unlike so many of his contemporaries had no interest in period films. He made stories of the present. It is intriguing that the family so interested him. He was born in Tokyo but his father sent his children to rural areas to go to school for years. Later when he returned he got a job at Shochiku, his father was dead-set against his going into films. His father died when Ozu was just being successful and Ozu spent the rest of his life living with his mother until she died a year before he did. He never married, never had children, never seemed to be in any relationship - so why I wonder does the family unit so fascinate him. But we are glad it did because now we have them to watch. I have to get to his later films but I have a long ways to go.