Movie "The Taste of Saury / AkiDo Fish Flavor" (1962) Japanese Blu-ray Edition Cover
The Taste of Saury / The Taste of Autumn Knife Fish (1962) is a film about the state of mind in the later years of life. The psychological state of the film is very meticulous and successful, full of tragedy, but there is no lack of unique humor. This film is the last work of Ozu Yasujiro (1903-1963), and from the perspective of understanding life, it is Ozu Yasujiro who integrates all his own experiences into it, leaving the desolate smile to the audience forever. The film was ranked eighth among the top ten films of 1962. "The Taste of Saury" has been selected as one of the 200 Japanese business cards.
Ozu Yasujiro's "The Taste of Saury" is actually not about saury, the only scene where fish appears in the whole film is the fish dish in the first three men inviting the teacher to drink a feast, but it is not saury, but moray eel.
Stills from the movie "The Taste of Saury / The Taste of Autumn Knife Fish" (1962).
It turned out that when Yasujiro Ozu was filming "Akira Hayakawa Iya/Kohayakawa Iya Aki" (1961), the company urged the next film, and he temporarily named it "The Taste of Saury" in a hurry. What the film wants to say is not the saury itself, but to bring people a "saury taste" like life situation.
What is the taste of saury? It is naturally difficult for Japanese people to have a deep understanding. Saury first appears in the Sanriku coastal area near Iwate Prefecture in Northeastern Japan in August and September, and then travels south to the Bunsho Peninsula near Tokyo in October and November, and arrives in Kishu Shingu, the hometown of Hario Sato, who once wrote poems and chanted "The Taste of Saury," in March of the following year. Wherever saury appears, it gives people a cold feeling of autumn wind and cold winter.
Stills from the movie "The Taste of Saury / Akidate 魚の味" (1962), Keiji Sada (left) and Jasmine Okada
In addition, the Japanese grilled saury, smoked on the small stove, shiny half of the black saury carcass nourished and oozed fat foam, the taste floated all over the room, extra rich, people smell it, more feel the autumn cool, "Saury is a faithful autumn fish, a grilled saury, it is like the wind blowing through the gap in the heart, the cool sentimentality immediately gushes up."
Because saury is a chiming fish, it has also become a common seasonal phrase in Japanese haiku writing. Casually on a haiku website for seasonal search, there must be it under the theme of autumn, we can also read such as "at dusk, the person who burns the autumn knife fish, gushing full of horizontal tails", "autumn deep, in the seven rounds of barbecue horizontal tail of the saury fish", "in the seven rounds of barbecue autumn fish autumn color full of long sky" (paraphrase) and other haiku, autumn knife fish triggered a deep autumn flavor, as Hai Sheng Basho chanted: "Twilight autumn long cry, when the wound sighs who is the son?" The west wind swept the whiskers! ”
Stills from the movie "The Taste of Saury / 秋刀魚の味" (1962), Kasa Chi-jin (left) and Shima Iwashita
Two young students led the elderly teacher to the dinner, and when the teacher was drunk, sorrow came from it. We were alone in the world, he said to them. This has always been the case. He lives with his daughter. The daughter took care of him, married from an unmarried marriage, and when he died, he would be left alone. He told Shuhei Hirayama, the protagonist of "The Taste of Saury," not to make the same mistake: to marry his daughter off while she was not yet old.
"Well—" Hirayama Shuhei said. There was no obvious emotion. He lives with a son and a daughter, who takes care of the father and son's diet. There is also a son who has started a family. He considered the teacher's poignant advice. In his office, a young woman about the age of her daughter was about to get married. Maybe the old man was right. On the night of the dinner, the students sent the teacher home to find that the teacher and his daughter ran a noodle restaurant, and she was fed up with her father getting drunk again. She cared about her father, but with drag, she was depressed.
The movie "The Taste of Saury/ Autumn Knife Fish Flavor" (1962) American Standard Collection The Criterion Collection Blu-ray Edition Cover
The more you get to know Yasujiro Ozu, the director of "The Taste of Saury," the more you realize how still he is. Yasujiro Ozu is one of the greatest artists in filmmaking. This was his last film. He never married. I have been living with my mother for 60 years. And a few months after his mother's death, he also died. Time and time again, he turns to the same core themes in all of his films: loneliness, family, dependence, marriage, parents and children.
When he put these themes under the movie lights, they are like polygons that reflect different variations on different scripts. His films are all completed in the emotional space he has experienced in his life, and there is no dramatic joy and sorrow, only "material sorrow"—the Japanese emotional expression of the impermanence of the world, both joy and sorrow.
Stills from the movie "The Taste of Saury / AkiDo Fish Flavor" (1962), from left to right: Kasa Tomoharu, Okada Jasmine, Shima Iwashita, and Keiji Sada
Yasujiro Ozu is a man with a deep understanding of human nature, and he does not make any dramatic remarks about it. We come here, longing for happiness, longing for everything to happen, we are imprisoned in our own loneliness, and life goes on as usual. He expresses this idea in a very unique style of video, and even from a single shot you can tell that this is a Ozu Yasujiro film.
Most of his films take place indoors. His camera is aimed at the person sitting on the tatami mat with a heads-up view. The camera position never moves. His shots often begin before people enter the frame and end after the frame is empty again. His foreground framing, from doors to windows or to other objects, takes care of everything in the shot.
Stills from the movie "The Taste of Saury/ Akidate Fish" (1962), Keiji Sada (left) and Keio Yoshida
People who worked with Yasujiro Ozu recall that Yasujiro Ozu was too concerned about the arrangement of props. In particular, a small teapot appears in one movie after another, like the label of a producer. The object itself is less important than its composition; he often composes the side in a stable picture, leading our gaze back and forth. The Taste of Saury is one of six color films he shot between 1958 and 1962, in which he specifically uses red to draw our attention deeper into the picture.
In almost every shot, in the foreground, mid-shot, and rear, there is a red or orange-red object. None of this is conspicuous. They could be a stove, a label on the wall, a piece of clothing hanging from a clothes hook, a vase, a few books. They don't have a special meaning, but because red is a dominant color, these objects lead our gaze through his light composition, thus avoiding the need to understand the lens through the glass of the flat. So these objects give his film a sense of spatial depth, which also mocks the virtual space of 3D.
Shuhei Hirayama in Taste of Saury starred Tomokazu Kasa (1904-1993). Kasa appears in almost every of Ozu's films. We feel that Kasachito always plays the role of Ozu Yasujiro, reserved, neat, quiet, and like Ozu Yasujiro himself, he often drinks a lot of wine, and he is more contemplative and moody. In Taste of Saury, Shuhei Hirayama, played by Kasa Tomotoshi, is a wage earner who works for an unnamed company and lives with his 24-year-old daughter Michiko (Tomoma Iwashita) and his younger son, Kazuo (Shinichiro Mikami).
The eldest son, Koichi (Keiji Sada), has become a family. Hirayama Shuhei is tall, slender, and always well-dressed. His feelings are left for us to speculate; Yasujiro Ozu prefers the audience to experience the inner feelings revealed in the dialogue. The character played by Kasaji always responds with a monosyllabic "Hmm-" when he is noncommittal. Two or three times in The Taste of Saury, I smile when I hear my eldest son respond the same.
The movie "The Taste of Saury/ Autumn Knife Fish" (1962) Australian DVD edition cover
The film takes place in Shuhei Hirayama's office, at home, in several bars and restaurants, and in his son's home. Many scenes have unhurried drinking scenes. These echoes throughout Ozu's work: in a similar story, "When the Father Was Alive/Father", 1942, there is also a reunion with an elderly teacher, also starring Tomotoshi Kasa, who is neither young nor old, and this time he lives with his son.
Ozu Yasujiro experienced things that only military service is not shown in the movie: going to school (smoking at school, drinking, skipping class, being expelled), working, never married, drinking heavily, being lonely, and spending a lot of time with colleagues who loved him. These are all elements of his films. Whether he felt dragged down by his mother, whether he had thought about getting married, we can't know for sure.
Stills from the movie "The Taste of Saury / Akito Fish Flavor" (1962), Kasa Chihō (left) and Shinichiro Mikami
In the 1930s, there were some rumors about a geisha. He has always worked for the same film company, Shochiku, and Shochiku respects him very much. The Japanese regard him as Japan's greatest director, but unlike Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998), Ozu Yasujiro is unknown to Westerners. Shochiku considered him "too Japanese" to go far until critic Donald Richie (1924-2013) arranged for some of his works to be screened at the Venice Film Festival in the early 1970s.
Watching Yasujiro Ozu's "The Taste of Saury", there is indeed this feeling of invincible autumn wind. Originally, "The Taste of Saury" compared to Ozu Yasujiro's early work "Tokyo Twilight/Tokyo Twilight" (1957), which depicts the bleak evening scene of the elderly, and "Tokyo Story/Tokyo Story" (1953), which expresses the disintegration of the family that expresses "the tree wants to be quiet and the wind is not stopping, and the children want to raise and the relatives are not there", the artistic circle seems to be much more peaceful.
Stills from the movie "The Taste of Saury/ The Taste of Autumn Knife Fish" (1962), Jasmine Okada
In fact, as Tang Zhenzhao said, "'Tokyo Twilight' deals with a different family, and the misfortune caused by the environment is a reason for the sadness of everyone to match the stable reason." Shuhei Hirayama of "The Taste of Saury" has children and daughters, and his married son and daughter-in-law (Played by Jasmine Okada) are also filial and considerate. But even if there are good people who are polite and courteous, they cannot alleviate the loneliness and helplessness of the elderly in their old age. The farewell of the daughter Luzi's marriage is rather a farewell to the old man. Because Pingshan Shuhei's pain did not have any misfortune on his body, he explained the torture of life more forcefully. ”
In fact, the situation of Hirayama Shuhei's teacher and daughter at the beginning of "The Taste of Saury" can be regarded as a side line of the work, it is the variation and echo of the motif of "Tokyo Twilight", which is intertwined with the main line of Hirasan Shuhei's married daughter, deepening the main theme of the reality of life that "whether it is sad or happy, and life ends up in the loneliness of one person", which is more difficult to cherish than "Tokyo Twilight".
"Akito no Miyukimi/ Taste of Saury" (1962) Koteru, Iwashita Shima
What's more, when Yasujiro Ozu made this film, it coincided with the death of his mother, and the bitter taste of that life was seen in his diary: Spring blooms under a clear sky / Cherry blossoms bloom brilliantly / I only feel dazed when I stay here alone / I think of the smell of saury / The broken cherry blossoms are like rags / Sake with the bitter taste of yellow lotus.
The bitterness in Yasujiro Ozu's heart is all flowing in the image of "The Taste of Saury". If nothing else, the change in his mood can be seen just by looking at the fact that the title design no longer uses the linen cloth used in his works since the mid-1930s. The quiet, simple and condensed style of Ozu Yasujiro's works is truly reflected in the simple linen cloth at the beginning, reflecting his inner peace of mind. This linen cloth has become the label of Ozu Yasujiro, and it has also become a scene that Ozu Yasujiro is obsessed with, as Huang Ailing said, "Every time I see the name of the opening staff, dignified and seemingly randomly written on the plain linen, my heart will be solid, like a frightened lost child, finally returning to the door, yes, it is this door, as long as you ring the doorbell, you will return to the familiar home." ”
The movie "The Taste of Saury / Autumn Knife Fish Flavor" (1962) French DVD version of the cover
In "The Taste of Saury", for some reason, the opening of the film is missing this familiar recognition, and those elegant tree shadows appear to be somewhat disordered, without the simplicity and authenticity that we are accustomed to, I can't help but be a little scared. When I think about it, this is Ozu Yasujiro's posthumous work. I can't help but wonder if yasujiro Ozu had a deeper understanding of the transmutation of life and the flow of time when he made this film? Did the death of his mother before the filming make Ozu Yasujiro sad and injured, so that the warmth of the azabu became the cold water of the river and the pale shadow of the trees reflected in it?
The problem of the elderly is the most cosmopolitan, because everyone is afraid of their own aging future. Although Yasujiro Ozu's work belongs to the typical Japanese civilian films. Without compelling plots, strong audiovisual impacts, and profound philosophical connotations, they still gain worldwide recognition and praise, proving that certain emotions are common to human beings.
Stills from the movie "The Taste of Saury/ Aki-Koji", Akidō Ryūmi (1962), Keiji Sada
And Yasujiro Ozu is the director who can best express the complex and subtle psychological changes of men in the near future of old age. They have a premonition that the prospects are bleak and powerless. Because of kindness and affection, he became understanding and understanding of his children. But what follows is an irrefutable loneliness and loneliness. "The Taste of Saury" and "Late Spring" (1949) are ostensibly stories of fathers promoting the happy marriage of their daughters, but in fact they express the sad mood of middle-aged and elderly men entering the evening scene.
In an additional interview reading of the Saury Flavor DVD released by standard collection firm Critterion, we see a TV show by French critics Michael Simon Michel Ciment and Georges Perec about the great film director who came into their sights more than a decade after his death.
Ajige, Akito no Miyuki/ Taste of Saury (1962) Kosho, Sugimura Haruko
They tried to describe their impressions of Yasujiro Ozu's work. Michael Simon said: "It's Japanese Zen Buddhism, the joy of reality when it overlaps with the past. George Perrick said, "Silence is better than sound at this time." "The material grief complex.
George Perrick revealed that when he saw the emotional climax of the movie, on the day of his daughter's big wedding, he burst into tears twice. She turned, dressed in a traditional bridal dress, radiant, so that her father looked at her. What are they thinking? She had always thought she shouldn't get married because her father and brothers couldn't arrange their lives without her. In the end, she fulfilled her father's wish. We didn't even see the guy she was marrying. The person she was walking toward wasn't the point, the focus was on the person she was leaving. Hirayama looked at her, "Hmm—" Look at it. Appreciated. acquiescence. No laughter. The separate scenes were violent to Yasujiro Ozu.
"Akito no Mimi/Taste of Saury" (1962) Japanese DVD version of the surface
The film does not show that the father and daughter are deeply related or dependent on each other. They are simply settled in a fixed existence, and marriage breaks that existence.
The soundtrack of a film composed by Takashi Saito sounds very Western (indeed, Italian), just like the soundtrack of any Ozu Yasujiro film. This is not anachronistic; Western music was once familiar to the Japanese. The soundtrack is beautiful and nostalgic, and instead of applause, it expresses words that are unspoken: we go on living. Do everything in one's power. We are satisfied with our own destiny. Things change. In the final shot, we see Shuhei Hirayama alone at home, in the kitchen at the empty end of the corridor. He poured himself a cup of tea, probably from the ordinary but unique little teapot that accompanied Ozu Yasujiro's lifelong journey.
Movie "The Taste of Saury / Autumn Knife Fish Flavor" (1962) British BFI Blu-ray Edition Cover