Higanbana

Named after the deep-red Japanese spider lily, Ozu’s first color film is at once an elegy and a comedy, an apparent contradiction which goes to the very heart of the film: “Life is full of contradictions. The sum of all life’s contradictions is life itself,” says Wataru Hirayama (Shin Saburi), the stubborn head of the family who forbids his eldest daughter Setsuko (played with quiet determination by Ineko Arima) from marrying for love, even as he appears tolerant to the outside world. It is only a trick – one that causes great merriment among the women involved – that prompts him to reconsider his stance. Both Ineko Arima and Yoshiko Kuga play young women who defy traditional Japanese notions, yet do not sever ties with their respective fathers at the same time, even as they embody these values. A subtle contradiction à la Ozu, in which the past and the future are intertwined, precisely framed in the same careful composition as always, albeit now in color. (mg)