A Film Canon

The most expansive of Ozu's ensemble dramas, Early Summer provides the most exquisite, reticulated evocation of the passage of time - and, more specifically, of the transition between pre-war and post-war generations - taking roughly the same premise as Late Spring, but extending its ambit to more fully encompass the very old and very young, all of whom play a tangible part in Noriko's (Setsuko Hara) gradual acceptance of the possibility of marriage, if not the entire heritage that it connotes. As in the earlier film, the point of transition is so pronounced that the characters are never quite able to fully inhabit or reject this heritage, producing a series of exquisitely paradoxical propositions that are encapsulated in Noriko's invocation of traditional etiquette at the very moment at which her modernity would seem to preclude it, as well as her brother's (Chishu Ryu) implication that her modernity is in fact concealing a vision of etiquette more antiquated, or reprehensible, than anything in the tradition she is rejecting: "You're always bringing etiquette up at every turn, expecting men to be kind to women. But you're mistaken. Men and women should both respect each other. That's what etiquette means." That said, any lasting opposition is undercut by the identification of Hara's deflective, yet generous laugh, and Ryu's quizzical, slightly incredulous, yet ultimately worldly smile, as well as by Ozu's ability to pull back just before reaching an emotional or visceral peak, whether by poetic elision (particularly prominent in the third act), or by recourse to a contemplative, respectful distance: "It's funny how our memories work." It's also worth mentioning the proliferation of vertical motifs, including the recurrent shots of Noriko's office block, an uncharacteristic crane shot and the peculiar prominence of the sky. Given the profound horizontality of Ozu's cinematic vision (the near-exclusive use of tatami-level shots and 360-degree conversational editing, as well as the figurative prominence of rail and beach, and the tropes of metonymy/ contiguity, rather than metaphor/linearity, to which they lend themselves), this seems less a matter of extending than abstracting space; or, alternatively, of extending the canvas against which every object, no matter how apparently small or insignificant, can become an object of sublimity, as in the poetic spectacle of a rapidly ascending, disappearing balloon.