Many of Ozu’s “pillow shots,” by themselves, might not mean much. So it’s here that I backtrack to admit that in the same rant in which I expressed frustration with Bordwell’s lack of specificity, I made the same mistake. Corridors make for perfect Ozu landscapes, of course, because they allow him to quite naturally play with visual depth, layering and patterning, which are things that Ozu otherwise had a habit of forcing into his compositions (think of the way he arranges teacups and beer bottles in the foreground of so many of his otherwise bland one-shots). Keith Watson, With Mud and Take Shelter, writer-director Jeff Nichols has already used withholding narratives to weave distinctly Southern tales about fringe believers, survivalists who could also be seen as evangelists. The film’s early scenes, set in a hardscrabble Fall River, Massachusetts, have a commanding dreariness that’s counterpointed by Hunnam’s fidgety energy and O’Connell’s stoic sense of loneliness. I realize that there are many cinema fans who perhaps prefer to have the mechanics of cinema be as visible as the emotions those mechanics are trying to convey, I’m just not one of them. Adapted from Larry Watson’s 2013 novel, Let Him Go relishes the sudden tonal shift that accompanies the Blackledges’ arrival on the Weboy ranch. Ozu’s attentiveness to domesticity and ordinary rituals—like the pouring of sake, around which so many scenes in his films are structured—only accentuates the extent to which his films are windows into life in a very particular time and place. Ozu’s world is unique in what way? (The gruffly charming Costner usually recedes into the background in the role of a skeptical but steadfast wingman.)
Here, the filmmaker utilizes his command of medium for more individualized purposes. This is particularly true of Horie’s relationship with his young new wife, which prompts lots of jokes about impotence and vitality, as well as some jabs at henpecked husbands.
Now it’s as if he’s coming to terms with the way things are.
Alton Meyer (Jaeden Lieberher) is another in Nichols’s lineage of would-be prophets, but no one here doubts the world-changing potential of the child’s visions. Ozu’s scenic inserts do this, too, of course, but it is only one function of these interludes. Humor, in general, is probably the most consistently undervalued aspect of Ozu’s cinema, and it manifests itself not only in the playful touches he sometimes applies to his scene decoration, but in his characters and dialogue as well. This is why films like An Autumn Afternoon, despite the specificity of Ozu’s commentary about post-war Japanese society, resonate with me in more universal ways as well. However, from the very beginning, Larry seems present but invisible without the aid of a phone camera, and is able to manipulate objects in the real world and endanger people’s lives. After Michiko’s wedding, Ozu twice inserts a series of views of the interior of Hirayama’s empty, quiet home. It’s a portrait of a shrewish, nasty old maid. Now infamous for its over-the-top gore and cheesy effects sequences, The Evil Dead is most impressive for Raimi’s unnerving wide angle work and his uncanny, almost unreal ability to suggest the presence of intangible evil via distant headlights, bleeding light sockets, and, in the film’s most awesome set piece, a simple game of cards. Sometimes I think they reveal the director’s passion for composition itself. This film is a pleasant, familiar reentry into Ozu’s style, but offers nothing new or unexpected. . And though Lane’s performance is dauntless and vital enough to animate the more solitary moments in the film, the verbal confrontations between the Blackledges and the Weboys often tiptoe toward ridiculousness in their shapeless hostility. This disturbing material is reminiscent of other films dealing with grief and marital collapse—especially Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs and Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, the latter of which also informs the impressively primordial look of the woods here—yet Koko-di Koko-da is nowhere near as impactful. But you also called it “evocative” and said it brings the viewer into Ozu’s “unique world.” So, let me ask you: Those shots are evocative of what, exactly? But once you get past the faux-provocation of the film’s title, it’s difficult to tell what ideologies the filmmakers are trying to skewer. Chopra homes in on how vast an age difference of even a year or two can seem when, for example, Connie’s friends want to go to a movie, only for the youngest among them to become exasperated when the others are willing to bail on the movie that she now wants to see due to their learning that a group of cute guys are seeing something else. Let Him Go is chockfull of characters telling each other to get to the point, but that directness comes at the cost of getting to know most of the characters, the battered Lorna included, outside of these melodramatic showdowns. More than once, Connie’s bravado falters when she catches wind of just how intently some teenage boys and even men are gawking at her, and at times it feels as if Smooth Talk is a slasher movie waiting to erupt. Bertino has classical chops, though here his classicism could use the visceral, disreputable goosing of a little rock n’ roll—an occasional joke, for instance, or even a brief moment in which someone experienced a sensation other than fear, melancholia, or paralysis, would’ve proved refreshing. Bordwell seems to suggest that this is a continuity error, but it isn’t; the shot structure implies that each character is looking over his own bottle (and glass) of beer to see his friend’s bottle, whereas the soy sauce bottle appears in each shot—and jumps from one half of the screen to the other—because it’s in the middle of the table. For one, why would a child’s toy beckon a nightmare world? While the film doesn’t entirely stick its murderous finale, no one who hears those scarifying final lines of dialogue will soon forget them. JB: I wish I could second your praise for the emotionality of Ozu’s films, and An Autumn Afternoon in particular, because that would mean I shared the impact of all that emotional weight.