On the occasion of his 70th birthday, GOETHE FILMS travels to the places that feature large in the oeuvre of Wim Wenders, including Japan in TOKYO-GA and NOTEBOOK ON CITIES AND CLOTHES screening October 6. Toronto-based Japanese film expert Chris MaGee on Wenders' love of Ozu:
Tokyo can be an overwhelming city. It’s one of the world’s most densely populated, 13 million people crammed into just over 2000 kilometres; and beneath its skyscrapers two major tectonic plates grind against each other shaking the city. Visiting Tokyo is exhilarating and dizzying.
In the spring of 1983 Wim Wenders made his first trip to Tokyo to chronicle something essential. Something true, but how could he get past the colour and novelty of the city to do that? He did what many foreigners do. He had a local show him around. Wenders' roadmap for his film "Tokyo-Ga" is the work of the legendary director Yasujiro Ozu.
From the beginning of his filmmaking career in 1927 until his death in 1963,
Ozu defined Japan's vision of itself. He did this through his own minimalist brand of shomin-geki, roughly translated as
"common people drama". By focusing on the gateway moments (engagements, weddings, reunions and funerals) in the lives of everyday folk Ozu explored the decline of the Japanese family. These small triumphs and generational schisms weren't the only changes chronicled in Ozu's films though. Of his 35 surviving films over 20 are set in Tokyo; and we see the city evolve and re-shape the lives of those in it.
There's a scene from Ozu's 1953 masterpiece "Tokyo Story" (clips of which open and close "Tokyo-Ga") in which an elderly couple, portrayed by Chishu Ryu and Chieko Higashiyama, are taken on a sightseeing tour of the city by their daughter-in-law, Noriko (Setsuko Hara). As the tour bus trundles along, the old man and woman seem as confused by what they see outside its windows as a foreign visitor would. They don’t recognize the Tokyo they see. The city they knew was nearly obliterated by the Allied Firebombing during WW2. Gone are the familiar low wooden buildings to be replaced by glass, steel and reinforced concrete.
It begs the question, in 1983,
20 years after Yasujiro Ozu's death, what is left of his Tokyo for Wenders to find? Wenders manages to track down Ozu's cameraman Yuharu Atsuta and actor Chishu Ryu; but even Ryu apologizes about how few would recognize him from his roles in Ozu's films. It's likely that if Ozu himself magically appeared at Wenders side that he would be just as bewildered as his German compatriot.
The landscape that we walk through changes. Landmarks rise and fall. The maps created in our memory are so easily rendered obsolete. The Japanese have a term for this : mono no aware (物の哀れ),or "the pathos of things", an appreciation of the impermanence of life. This concept lies at the center of Ozu's aesthetic, and
it's through this lens that Wenders can pull back the dazzle of Tokyo and clearly see … a child being given a piggy back ride by his grandmother, men and women celebrating under cherry blossoms, a pair of trains passing each other in the sleeping night.
This world of Ozu's is also Wenders' world and it's our world too. We can't hold onto it, but through filmmakers like these and films like "Tokyo-Ga" we can
savour the captured moments before they blink away.
Please see our web site for full program details!
image: original German poster of "Tokyo-ga" from Goethe-Institut Toronto show "Wenders in the Cities" c photo Goethe-Institut
