Otona no miru ehon - Umarete wa mita keredo (1932)'s comments

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Siskoid

Before the war, back when Yasujirō Ozu was still making silent comedies, he won acclaim with I Was Born, But…, and to my surprise, it really does feel like a comedy all the way through (unlike, say, Passing Fancy, which straddles the line more tightly and which I affect more). A family moves to a new town, and we watch its two young boys get up to all sorts of shenanigans, mostly trying to avoid school because of bullies and easy humiliations, though within a few days, they've turned things around, cuz kids are fickle. If there's drama, it's when the boys realize their father is just a wage slave, trying to ingratiate himself to the boss and other co-workers and so on, the pulling of a veil that makes him weaker and less respectable in their eyes. Ozu prefigures this with other disappointments, as the boys' "kid logic" fails them repeatedly and shows them to be just games no matter what idea they convinced themselves of. But if their dad is any indication, they may be playing games and lying to themselves their entire lives. Comedy or drama, it's a child's eye view, well-observed and treated by Ozu. The kids are memorable and distinctive, their adventures perfectly amusing, and the parents are poignant too (you can't be unphased by the scene where they watch the boys sleep).

4 years 9 months ago