The Face of Time - POV - Aarhus Universitet

60 p.o.v. number 13 March 2002
Ozu. Not exactly a pastiche (because pastiche implies irony and
distance), more a sort of friendly appropriation. The object seems to
have been to produce with minute exactitude “the sort of film that
Ozu might have made” so that, coming across it unprepared, one
could almost mistake it (within its limited terms of course: it is only
10 minutes long) for a lost or forgotten work of the master.
The story centres round a boy’s first day at a new school. He
comes from out of town, as a transfer student, and his mother hasn’t
yet had a chance to kit him out with the standard school uniform. So
there he is, somewhat gawky in his kimono, timorous and tonguetied,
but made to feel at home by a kind girl, O-Yoshi, who asks him
to sit at the desk next to hers. Ozu’s films are famously timeless, but
logically we must here be in the 1930s (rather than, for example, the
1950s, to which the film’s visual style otherwise refers us) because
there is talk of the Emperor and what the school owes to that august
personage. Indeed, reference to the Emperor is the twist or the conceit
which the film hinges on. “Most important in this world is our
duty to serve the Emperor,” intones the male teacher to the class in
front of him, proceeding to ask young Taro – whom he fears is not
listening – what is most important for him. “Bean cakes,” replies the
child innocently. Not the answer that was expected – or needed. The
teacher can’t resist a bit of ideological bullying. “Do you like bean
cakes more than this school?” he pursues. Followed by: “Do you like
bean cakes more than your parents? Do you like bean cakes more
than the EMPEROR?” The boy doesn’t reply to these last two
provocations, and as a result gets sent out of the class for the rest of
the day. A minor scandal: his poor mother will have to be informed
of Taro’s stubbornness, to her shame.