Review of Late Spring (2014) by Paul D — 05 Aug 2010
Ozu's Late Spring is a quiet yet intensely emotional and poignant filmic journey that explores the nature of familial bonds by means of Ozu's trademark zen direction. In Ozu's world everything is beautiful, partly because it all remains so fragile and prone to tragedy.
In Late Spring, a widowed father must learn to part with his beloved daughter, and this parting represents a catastrophic event for both individuals because the daughter had assumed the role not only of a child but as a wife and best friend as well.
But she must marry and enter adulthood, for life's stages are as transient and fragile as the seasons. Each stage proves beautiful in its own right, but the passage from one stage to another always entails a inevtiable sense of loss.
Indeed, Ozu suggests that happiness itself must be predicated upon our ability to cope with loss and make the most of our situations. The world is beautiful but it is also cruel, and we must learn to accept this cruelty as the foundation upon which all possible beauty rests.
To watch Ozu is to look into the heart of the human and the world we have created for ourselves--it is to experience everything that is wonderful and tragic about our precarious situation in the universe.
This review of Late Spring (2014) was written by Paul D on 05 Aug 2010.
Late Spring has generally received positive reviews.
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