On <em>Floating Weeds</em>

Some time ago I saw a brilliant movie on the Independent Film Channel. The story it told was engrossing and elegant. Every character was somebody I wanted to know better. Every frame of every shot could hang on somebody’s wall. The visual construction was beautifully simplistic. The film in its 4:3 aspect ratio filled the standard screen of my television and the camera stayed right where it was. The interiors were filled with a multitude of complex, shadowy surfaces, and the exteriors with dazzling colour and poetic simplicity. I was watching director Yasujiro Ozu’s 1959 film Floating Weeds, and I never saw the ending until I borrowed a Criterion Collection DVD and watched it this evening.

The story of Floating Weeds is a fairly straightforward family drama: Kumajuro – the leader of an acting troupe – brings his band of actors to small seaside town, visits his illegitimate son, and incurs the wrath of his lover and leading lady Sumiko by keeping secret from her the truth about his son and his former mistress. I could discuss every shot in this film at length, but that seems excessive, so I’ll just mention some of the moments that most fascinated me. There was the Kumajuro’s vicious verbal fight with Sumiko, conducted as the two stood under awnings on opposite sides of the street while rain showered down between them. There was the troupe leader’s son Kiyoshi being led by a mysterious young actress into the dark recesses of the the theater, and the abrupt, halting way he embraced her in what may have been his first romantic encounter – for that sort of obscure and uncertain journey is how romance is discovered. I was also intrigued by Kiyoshi’s aquard discussion with the actress (in which they discuss their futures) in the shadow of a land-bound boat, and that moment when the camera lingers upon a table set with two perfectly symmetrical places for the couple.

Probably the most shocking moment of the movie is Kiyoshi’s sudden outburst near the film’s end. The troupe leader, left with only enough money for a train ticket after his failure to attract a reliable audience, decides to disband the troupe and start over alone in another town. The mother of his child, however, proposes that he settle down and be Kiyoshi’s father, and Kumajuro enthusiastically agrees. Everything seems to fit. Kiyoshi will have a more secure family life, Komajuro will finally be free from the whims of showbusiness that have hurt him so, and the mother will have someone to grow old with her. I actually thought Kiyoshi would be delighted to hear the news that Kumajuro (whom Kiyoshi has always been told is his uncle) had decided to play the part of a father. Instead, Kiyoshi  – who has been very reserved throughout the film, suddenly shouts that he doesn’t want a father and that Kumajuro has no right to assume that role. I nearly fell out of my seat. Kiyoshi was right, and Kumajuro realized that Kiyoshi was right. And so the father who will forever be called “Uncle” by his son boards a train with his lover and the last we see of him is a pair of red lights fading into the night.