Jevo
Registered User
- Oct 3, 2010
- 3,485
- 363
Floating Clouds (1955) dir. Mikio Naruse
In post-war Japan, Yukiko wanders aimlessly around. She is looking for her place in the world. She doesn't have much family or friends from before the war, and no one she really wants to be with, or use as stabilizers in her life. This causes her to seek out Kengo, a man she had an affair with during the war. As they were both stationed on a forestry mission in Vietnam. Not that it meant a lot to Kengo, or perhaps even Yukiko. But Kengo is the only person she can think of seeking out for some comfort. Kengo is not against reigniting the affair. Only problem is he's married, and he's not about to leave his wife. Even if their marriage isn't exactly going swimmingly. So Yukiko floats around life some more, with Kengo coming in and out at times, as she tries to find a place for herself in the world. But she seems to never be able to find a nice landing spot.
If I could use one word to describe Floating Clouds it would probably be unelaborate, the very opposite of the movie we just watched. Dialogue is minimal and minimalistic. The camera work is very simple as well. Rarely does the camera move, and the camera positions and the framing are very simple as well. Somewhat unlike Ozu, who is otherwise quite like Naruse, who also often has a very static camera, but every camera position and framing seems to be very elaborate. Naruse's editing and mise-en-scene in general also seem very stripped down. This is not a critique, because Naruse has stripped the movie down to its emotional core, and he doesn't let anything obstruct that. This also means that the quite melodramatic story, is kept low key, and the melodrama doesn't become overbearing. Because on the surface, the movie is quite calm, but underneath there's a lot of emotions all the time.
The pace of the movie is slow and languid, somewhat like the life of Yukiko. Although Yukiko might wish life would slow down, so that she could catch up, and make something proper with her life. Because much of the movie, we and Yukiko seem terribly aware, that life is passing by, all her old relations and lovers are slowly fading away, and there's nothing new popping up for her, not something that we don't quickly realise is also just a passing thing. The movie is very somber in that way. Continuity of this story is not really something that Naruse has been too concerned with. At least not temporal continuity, as the story just around in time quite a bit. But rather there seem to an emotional continuity instead.
Sadly Mikio Naruse's films can be hard to come by in the west, so I'm sorry if some of you weren't able to get your hands on the film. I'm not really sure why, because his movies are usually brilliant, atleast the ones I've seen, he has more than 90 director credits on IMDB, so I doubt all of them are masterpieces. But my experience with him tells me that he should be talked about more in the west. Stylistically an thematically, I think Naruse has quite a bit of overlap with Ozu. And movies like this one and When A Woman Ascends The Stairs, are just as good as some of Ozu's best work. Although Ozu's peak is probably just that bit higher, but there are very few movies in the world as good as Tokyo Story.
In post-war Japan, Yukiko wanders aimlessly around. She is looking for her place in the world. She doesn't have much family or friends from before the war, and no one she really wants to be with, or use as stabilizers in her life. This causes her to seek out Kengo, a man she had an affair with during the war. As they were both stationed on a forestry mission in Vietnam. Not that it meant a lot to Kengo, or perhaps even Yukiko. But Kengo is the only person she can think of seeking out for some comfort. Kengo is not against reigniting the affair. Only problem is he's married, and he's not about to leave his wife. Even if their marriage isn't exactly going swimmingly. So Yukiko floats around life some more, with Kengo coming in and out at times, as she tries to find a place for herself in the world. But she seems to never be able to find a nice landing spot.
If I could use one word to describe Floating Clouds it would probably be unelaborate, the very opposite of the movie we just watched. Dialogue is minimal and minimalistic. The camera work is very simple as well. Rarely does the camera move, and the camera positions and the framing are very simple as well. Somewhat unlike Ozu, who is otherwise quite like Naruse, who also often has a very static camera, but every camera position and framing seems to be very elaborate. Naruse's editing and mise-en-scene in general also seem very stripped down. This is not a critique, because Naruse has stripped the movie down to its emotional core, and he doesn't let anything obstruct that. This also means that the quite melodramatic story, is kept low key, and the melodrama doesn't become overbearing. Because on the surface, the movie is quite calm, but underneath there's a lot of emotions all the time.
The pace of the movie is slow and languid, somewhat like the life of Yukiko. Although Yukiko might wish life would slow down, so that she could catch up, and make something proper with her life. Because much of the movie, we and Yukiko seem terribly aware, that life is passing by, all her old relations and lovers are slowly fading away, and there's nothing new popping up for her, not something that we don't quickly realise is also just a passing thing. The movie is very somber in that way. Continuity of this story is not really something that Naruse has been too concerned with. At least not temporal continuity, as the story just around in time quite a bit. But rather there seem to an emotional continuity instead.
Sadly Mikio Naruse's films can be hard to come by in the west, so I'm sorry if some of you weren't able to get your hands on the film. I'm not really sure why, because his movies are usually brilliant, atleast the ones I've seen, he has more than 90 director credits on IMDB, so I doubt all of them are masterpieces. But my experience with him tells me that he should be talked about more in the west. Stylistically an thematically, I think Naruse has quite a bit of overlap with Ozu. And movies like this one and When A Woman Ascends The Stairs, are just as good as some of Ozu's best work. Although Ozu's peak is probably just that bit higher, but there are very few movies in the world as good as Tokyo Story.