The films of Yasujiro Ozu are rooted in a particular time and place—his own. But they bring to mind core elements of the human condition. Jealousy and desire, sacrifice, the family bond: elements that persist across cultures and the march of years, through changes in technology and outlook. We connect with his characters because we’re human and they are too, and some things are just eternal.
With this in mind, consider A Story of Floating Weeds.
It is one of Ozu’s last silent films, emblematic enough of his mature style that he would remake it, in 1959, as the sound and color classic, Floating Weeds. But while it contains plenty of the timeless wisdom we look for when we rent or stream—or, ideally, buy a ticket to watch—an Ozu movie, one is tempted to say that A Story of Floating Weeds speaks more to our own day than any other. Because the hero of this picture, if he can be called that, is part of a brotherhood that includes men like Tony Soprano, Don Draper, and Walter White. The duplicitous icons of our age.
Takeshi Sakamoto plays Kihachi, the middle-aged leader of a traveling acting troupe. They’re a band of greedy, venal, unkempt, but largely good-natured actors, providing us with a number of low-comic scenes, including a two-man horse costume and a kid with jock itch. Ozu keeps things light, at least early on—consider one scene, where a hungry actor steals money from his own son’s cat-shaped ceramic bank. The child confronts his father, humiliating him, and takes the money back. This is a disturbing set of events, if you think about it too long. But you will laugh.
Sakamoto was a busy actor in this period. He excelled at playing flustered men, even hapless ones, animated by a fierce and, at times, toxic pride. He brings this core contradiction to Kihachi. The troupe leader moans about aches and pains, but he has no intention of quitting his job. And though the other actors tease him, there is no doubt who’s in charge. Kihachi is no matinee idol, but he has magnetism. A local woman wistfully recalls seeing him years ago, to her husband’s annoyance. His girlfriend, Otaka, is an actress many years younger than he is. And then there’s Otsune …
The film opens with the troupe’s arrival in a small town, where they’ve been popular for years, and it is Otsune, a local restaurant owner (played by Choko Iida) that Kihachi is most anxious to see. She receives him warmly, as though he’s visiting his own home. Otsune’s son Shinkichi comes and goes throughout the course of their conversation. Whenever he leaves the room, Kihachi asks after him. Otsune replies that he’s well. “He’ll be eligible for the draft next year,” she adds. “He still thinks his father’s dead?” Kihachi inquires. Otsune confirms that he does—is it now time for Kihachi to admit to the boy that he is not some traveling uncle, but, in fact, his father? Kihachi declines. “He wouldn’t want a dad like me.”
Otsune ought to be bitter. Yet when Kihachi thoughtlessly remarks how hard it must have been to raise Shinkichi alone, she almost chirps her response: “I don’t mind hardship as long as it’s for his sake.” She seems so much older than Kihachi. Her face moves too fast from grin to frown to grin again. We sense she could be devastated at any moment.
Otsune is a far more sympathetic figure than Kihachi, but it is still his story we focus on. His capacity to grow up. A pattern begins to develop that modern viewers will find familiar: that of the manchild who reframes his own selfish choices as sacrifice. Tony Soprano, we remember, was a mobster who enjoyed the spoils of his career. But he justified everything from theft to murder by pointing to the lifestyle it afforded his family. (His wife, who complained about his instability and infidelity, was always reminded how much she liked the money.) Breaking Bad’s Walter White transformed himself from a milquetoast science teacher into a ruthless cooker of meth, downplaying the thrills that his new life gave him with sober pronouncements about how his family would be comfortable after he was gone. Don Draper, like Kihachi, is no criminal, though both of them are in the business of creating fictions for public consumption. Draper also shares Kihachi’s—at times—painfully transactional approach to emotional relationships. His famous line—“that’s what the money is for”—is delivered in reply to a subordinate in desperate need of personal validation from her boss. Otsune, likewise, longs for more than material support from Kihachi. But he sees himself as doing all he can for her—indeed, the absolute maximum he should do.
Kihachi believes he’s doing his loved ones a good turn by protecting their social standing. Telling Otsune that their son “wouldn’t want a dad like him” is his way of saying that acting is a low profession. Which might strike us as pitiable, were it not so convenient. Kihachi’s desire to spare Otsune and Shinkichi his shame also allows him to keep doing what he loves, drinking and sleeping with whomever he likes, in towns and cities far more fun than this one. It’s not just the mother and son who are punished by this dodge. “Don’t think you can just walk out on me,” Otaka warns him during a nasty fight. “My son belongs to a better world than yours,” he replies, as though it isn’t his world too. The truth is, Kihachi loves his job, and he’s not ashamed of being low class. If he were, he wouldn’t bring it up so often. He might even argue that he isn’t low class after all. Or that Shinkichi having a father in his life matters more than what that father does for a living. These are points of principle, and a case can be made for any of them. But making it too well would deny him the freedom he craves.
Like so many of our modern, popular narratives, A Story of Floating Weeds keeps us engaged despite a protagonist who’s indefensibly selfish. In this case, I think, the comedy helps. Kihachi is so easy to laugh at that we soften his actions, even when they are monstrous. “It isn’t good to be alone all the time,” Otsune warns him, as though that had been his problem, rather than hers. The idea that he’ll finally settle down makes her buoyant, and we wish he didn’t have that much power. But since he does, we hope he’ll use it for good.
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I think Ozu fans and silent film fans are the same kind of person. Though Ozu’s most celebrated work comes after he switched to sound in 1936, even those movies emphasize the visual in ways that make him a kindred. What you see in his movies matter far more than what you hear, even though his actors talk a great deal—especially when they’re drunk. Often, their need to talk is more important than what they say. The director’s famed conservatism (he didn’t make a color film until 1958, seven years after Keisuke Kinoshita’s Carmen Comes Home) suggests a man who knew that great movies don’t need to meet current technological standards to make an impact. This is, surely, one of the great arguments for watching silent film today—not that we need convincing. Ozu, you suspect, never needed convincing either.
Presented at ADoS with live musical accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald and Mas Koga