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Floating Weeds (DVD)
Year: 1959
Rating: PG
Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Cast: Machiko Kyo, Ganjiro Nakamura, Ayako Wakao
Release Date: July 14, 2010
Distributor: Madman
The Film: 4.0
FILMINK rates DVDs and Blu-rays out of 5Aesthetically beautiful, witty and moving, this is a truly special film.
This is a really splendid and moving late work from Japanese master filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. It's restrained, and utterly beautiful to look at, with its unique and majestic pastel colour scheme wrapping around the eye like a comfort blanket. Gently comedic, and caught up in character and behaviour more than melodramatic plotting, the story deals with a band of travelling players (they are the "floating weeds" of the title) who land in a tiny coastal hamlet and set up a theatre. The action traces the way that these strangers influence the town and, indeed, affect its every day rhythms; of course, the outgoing, adventurous (and obviously "rootless") ensemble of theatre-makers are they themselves changed by their visit.
Ozu, always interested in ageing, family, and the chance encounter that can enrich a life, is playing again with his favourite themes here. It's hard to believe that until the seventies, Ozu was somewhat under-valued, over-looked and underrated by western critics (and audiences). Such lofty considerations aside, the wit and humour in the movie is truly something special. This was in fact a remake of Ozu's own 1934 film A Story Of Floating Weeds, which was far more melodramatic in tone.