Good Morning

There is a calculus of neighborly relations in master director Yasujiro Ozu's 1959 feature GOOD MORNING, his second in color.  A group of people live merely inches away from each other in small but orderly bungalows in suburban Tokyo.  Almost immediately we learn of the controversy over missing dues money among the women of this story, gossip hounds who are quick to perpetuate misunderstandings that further fuel their guilt.  Soap opera-ish? Sort of.  But it's all very sweet.  There's no sleeping around, but a translator who is out of work does consider a romance with the aunt of two young boys named Minoru and Isamu, who decide to protest their parents' refusal to buy a television set with a vow of silence.

Ozu's film almost feels like an Asian episode of Leave It to Beaver, complete with frequent teacher and parent trouble set to corny 1950's music by Toshiro Mayuzumi.  That's the point, I think.  Western influence and satire of such is all over this film, from its discussions about T.V. creating millions of idiots to other discussions of the banality of adult communication, with empty niceties about the weather and the like. The adults tend to act like children and vice versa.  Oh, well, the boys do like to press each others' foreheads and pass gas, a gag repeated through the film.  Ozu and fart jokes? More innocent and cute than you would imagine.  It somehow doesn't seem crass.

Cute is an accurate way to describe GOOD MORNING, but also knowing and wise.  A real social treatise, this. One for the time capsule that once unearthed, will reveal that little has changed among mankind, regardless of geography.  The universality of gossip and flatulence and the annoyance of salespeople (who still need to feed their families) comprise Ozu's gentle tale that is essentially A Few Days In the Life...Every character is drawn lovingly, and performed likewise. The production design and even directorial choices very often reminded me of Wes Anderson, who is clearly a fan of this.

It certainly makes the case against zero lot lines and close quartering among many.  This is even addressed in the film.  But what sort of flawed humans would we be out there on miles of acres, away from the busybodies?