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"Maturity is often more absurd than youth, and very frequently is most unjust to youth" (Edison). The opening shot of the truck wheel spinning in the mud showcases Yasujiro Ozu's knack for pregnant gags, the suburban salaryman is later seen exercising stiffly amid clotheslines while a trolley zips by (a change in angle reveals a cigarette on his lips). The Showa period as a neighborhood of shoji sliding screens and white picket fences and marching exercises, the new boys (Tomio Aoki, Hideo Sugawara) are deadpan scrabblers who ditch class and come up with calligraphy grades of their own. They gulp sparrow eggs to get the strength to face the bully, and, accepted into the peewee pecking order, enjoy a bit of bullying themselves. Filial pride ("My dad's more important than yours") leads them into the mansion of the local industrialist (Takeshi Sakamoto), where an evening of home movies reduces their esteemed father (Tatsuo Saito) from lord of the manor to kowtowing court jester. (At first giggling at the projector's flickering images, the brothers find themselves abruptly and dolorously illuminated and trudge out into a starless night.) Hal Roach humor sets up the Jamesian sting, the tatami shot expresses the ideal vantage for surveying the joys and banalities of youthful and adult existence, two tracking shots plus one cut connect a classroom of students to a row of office drones (the laterally sprinting camera pauses long enough to capture a yawn). Is there really no moral justification between one grown-up buffoon and another, just money? At home the boys refuse to eat their noodles in protest, gradually the lesson of hunger versus idealism sinks in. "Don't become a sorry apple-polisher like me, boys," father and filmmaker ask the slumbering brood, teaching them to accept the injustices of a regimented world while secretly yearning for their rebellion. With Mitsuko Yoshikawa, Teruyo Hayami, and Seiichi Kato. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |