Ozu's Classic Early Summer (Bakushu): Film Review

Yasujiro Ozu's Bakushu, or Early Summer, is a low-key domestic drama that benefits from Ozu's characteristic style as well as elements such as the crane shot that, while unusual in Ozu's films, are all the more impressive when employed sparingly as Ozu does. In the latter category, techniques Ozu rarely used but employed in Bakushu, the theater pan shot was especially effective: in order to transition from a scene in which characters were watching a play to a scene in which those characters had returned home Ozu panned across an empty theater, then cut to a pan of the house of the family central to the film. The effect was at once one of subtlety and clarity. The aforementioned crane shot was also a delight to watch. As a pair of sisters, one sister being the character around whose struggles the film is built, climb a hill, they talk jokingly of the struggles of adulthood and marriage. Ozu's crane shot in this scene punctuated the understated criticality of this moment, of the acceptance of adulthood and its accompanying responsibilities and joys.

Ozu's numerous other stylistic choices shape the film into a unique world of Ozu's imagining, a world black-and-white yet vibrant with Ozu's small touches. The film opens with one shot after another of common household objects and everyday events: the father at the head of the family mixes birdseed, a train passes through the station of a country village. These images, combined with the recurring elements of birdsong and light background music reminiscent of a music box, paint a picture of innocent, undisturbed domestic and pastoral contentment. These images and sounds feel just as appropriate to one at the beginning of the film, when the central female character is still unbothered by pressures to find a husband, as at the end when her parents find themselves alone at a relative's house reflecting on their daughter's approaching wedding.