'Floating Weeds' by Yasujiro Ozu, the Shakespeare of Film...

I feel that it's very important to review a film in a timely fashion upon its release, so as to add whatever two cents might be necessary or desirable to influence the narrative. So, considering that 'Floating Weeds' was released in 1959, I figured it was about time to rush out this review so as not to nudge up too close to my self-imposed hundred-year deadline. No problem: time to spare...

'Bird in the hand', 'two's company', 'pride goeth before a fall', 'like father like son', 'apple didn't fall far', 'honesty is the best—you get the idea. Call them cliché if you want. Or call them the classic themes of literature—and film: truth, goodness beauty, love, jealousy, pride, revenge, so on and so forth. No one called them cliches when Shakespeare articulated them brilliantly, and all he had were words.  Now imagine Shakespeare in chiaroscuro...


...or imagine a sky full of flower petals blowing lightly in the breeze or the smell of salt implied in the sweat of fisherman pulling fish from the ocean. This is the vocabulary that Ozu uses to create the psyche-scapes that inform his movies, he perhaps the only filmmaker in the world of equal importance in the silent and sound film eras.  'Floating Weeds', in fact, is a remake of a silent film of his with a similar name. And the plot is as brilliant as it is classic—like Shakespeare.

Do I need to give a spoiler alert for a movie almost a century old in its original conception? No? Good: so an itinerant actor revisits a town where he once fathered a child for whom he has since been known as 'uncle'. His new mistress is also there with the troupe, as well as his previous mistress with son now an adult—and available. What could go wrong? See the movie. Ozu is now my favorite filmmaker of all time. Ask Netflix.