The End of Summer

THE END OF SUMMER
KOHAYAGAWA-KE NO AKI
Japan
1961
103 Min
Color
1.33:1
Japanese
DIR Yasujiro Ozu
PROD Sanezumi Fujimoto, Tadahiro Teramoto, Masakatsu Kaneko
SCR Yasujiro Ozu, Kogo Noda
DP Asakazu Nakai
CAST Ganjiro Nakamura, Setsuko Hara, Yoko Tsukasa, Michiyo Aratama, Keiji Kobayashi, Masahiko Shimazu, Hisaya Morishige, Chieko Naniwa, Reiko Dan, Chishu Ryu, Haruko Sugimura, Daisuke Kato
ED Koichi Iwashita
MUSIC Toshiro Mayuzumi
My Rating : 2/5


This movie was quite a strange experience for me. It almost felt like someone had tampered with an Ozu film and inserted some montages and contrasting background score to mess it up. If this was Ozu’s attempt at black comedy then it was terrible one in my opinion. Furthermore, the movie lacked focus due to which the viewer is left confused regarding the subject matter of this movie. The movie dwells on a character (Hara’s father)which the viewer would have never expected to be shown in so much detail. Setsuko Hara on the other hand is missing after the first two scenes and we are wondering where she has gone until she makes short appearances till the end of the movie. We are so used to watching Hara in important roles that this unnatural cameo comes as a shock to us especially since the film begins with her.
The most impressive part of the film is Ozu’s characteristic humour that he uses very effectively until he decides to give us a tight slap at the end and leave us wondering whether we really deserved it. The curtains come down on the movie with an eerie background score and you are left wondering what exactly Ozu wishes to convey to us by doing that since the visuals are telling a totally different story.
Ozu has tried to surprise us is this movie which unfortunately feels like an experiment that went terribly wrong.