context: movies > directors > Ozu

Yasujiro Ozu, Zen Director?

Well, no. Obviously he was not much on flash and flourish, but as a maker of realistic domestic drama, that's natural enough. There is no record of his having any special interest in or affinity for Zen. We do see a sad acceptance of change in the world in his films, and that is something that is very much part of Zen - but then, it is also a part of 20th C Japanese society, of growing up in a nation leaving key parts of its heritage behind, in favour of changing to, in many ways, follow the West. Overall, it seems better to see his aesthetics and moods as natural responses to the times - and even as social and political comment: this is more overt in his early films, which feature rich and poor people, not just the middle classes as in most of his later work. This was an era when the nation pushed an idea of itself as a family - so what is more natural than to see family dramas as simultaneously commentaries on the country as a whole?

forwards: experimental?