Floating Weeds (Ukigusa)

Floating Weeds (Ukigusa), 1959. Directed by Yasujiro Ozu.

Great movie. Stunning compositions. Every frame can be a photo. Not for everyone, especially impatient people used to Hollywood paced plot driven movies.

A poor itinerant Kabuki troupe arrives in a small town. The master visits a son he hasn't seen in 12 years and who knows him only as an uncle. The jealous mistress of the master plots to tarnish the innocence of the young man. 

Machiko Kyō who plays the mistress is a scence stealer. I love watching her subtle expressions: when she is jealous, you feel sick; and when she is hopeful, you feel butterflies. If you are a film buff then you'll know she was the main character in Kurosawa's Rashōmon (1950).


This is the first Ozu movie I've watched. It is my first foray into what I imagine to be snooty "film buff" favourites. Ozu is revered by film critics for his methods. I watched Floating Weeds twice, first for the story and then again with Roger Ebert's commentary track on. I expected more from Ebert. Too much redundancy. Here are some technical notes:

• Ozu never moves the camera
  
• camera is usually placed at the eye level of someone seated on the floor
• composition takes precedence over continuity. eg. a Gizo statute with a red bib faces the camera even if a subseqent shot of a room is from another angle
• Ozu loved red so many scences have a bit of red in it
• people look directly into the camera during dialogues
• scenes often have frames within frames. Ozu uses Japanese architecture of sliding doors and hanging banners to maximize this theatrical effect
• often there is depth in scenes. i.e. you can see beyond characters into the next room or out windows. This compensates for not having the camera pan the room. 
• characters are often lined up in a diagonal row and talk while looking at the same direction