Yearning

Mikio Naruse is of the same generation as Kurosawa, Ozu and Mitzoguchi, but he is less well known. His films have much in common with those of Yasujiro Ozu. His main themes are family relations and the tension between tradition and modernisation in Japan after World War II. His female characters are on average stronger than the women in Ozu films.

"Yearning" is one of his latest and highly rated films. It is typical of his whole oeuvre. Tradition versus modernisation is represented by the mom and dad stores threatened by the rise of supermarkets. The strong woman is the young widow who has build up the mom and dad store of her parents in law after her husband died in World War II. Family complications arise when the family (mostly the daughters) plans to sell the premise of the store to a supermarket and wants to get rid of their sister in law. That they rap up this message in the form of concern (isn't it time for their sister in law to remarry?) makes is no less selfish.

With the widowed sister in law as the only likeable character in the film one almost has has to think of "Tokyo story" (1953, Yasujiro Ozu).

Mikio Naruse's film Yearning reflects the significant social change occurring in Japan in 1964 when supermarkets began to offer cheaper prices in order to drive out the small shops which had dominated the market. This changing structure particularly affects Reiko (Hideko Takamine), a widow since the last war after only being married for six months. She has remained with her husband's family to run the family grocery store along with her mother-in-law Shizu (Aiko Mamasu) while brother-in-law Koji (Yûzô Kayama), and sister-in-laws Hisako (Mitsuko Kusabue) and Takako (Yumi Shirakawa) live their own private lives. Takamine's remarkable performance as the repressed widow conveys a longing for a freedom that has been elusive.

The film opens as a van parades the streets advertising the supermarket, driving past Reiko's store in the process. Shot in Naruse's quiet style, the film is a study in contrasts. Reiko is a woman with traditional values who has repressed her own desire for companionship to serve her husband's family, while Koji is a layabout who drinks and gambles and takes no responsibility for the family business. When a group of drunken businessman pressure bar girls to see how many eggs they can stuff into their mouths, Koji intervenes and starts a fight leaving Reiko to bail him out of jail. Koji and his sisters make plans to build their own supermarket, but conspicuously leave Reiko out of their plans, urging her to remarry.

Reiko is hurt by the family's seeming lack of appreciation for her service. She is accepting of her role, but emotionally unprepared when Koji surprisingly confesses to her that he loves her. Though Reiko initially rejects his advances, she tells him later: "when you said you loved me, I felt glad," and "I've been a different woman since that day." She is unable, however, to accept Koji's telling her that she has wasted her life for his family. Though she hears the words, she is too bound to the past to be able to acknowledge their truth. She tells Koji, "I didn't waste my life. I lived it," but she is not convincing. The entire mood of the film changes with Koji's declaration and the way their relationship unfolds constitutes the emotional core of the film and provides its most dramatic moments and its shattering conclusion.

In the War, Hideko Takamine married a soldier. He was killed within six months. His family's liquor store was caught in a bombing raid, and while most of the community fled, she singlehandedly worked to rebuild the business. Now eighteen years have passed and the store and the family are prosperous. However, there are two new supermarkets in town, drawing all the business. Yûzô Kayama, her husband's younger brother, has been strangely lazy. He had a job with a good corporation, but quit. Instead of working at the store, he spends his days loafing. Yet he is smart enough to realize that, with the store's good location, there is an answer: convert to a supermarket. The family is enthusiastic. His sisters' husbands are willing to back the expanded venture in return for directorships, and the sisters are ecstatic. Yûzô says that Hideko will have to be an executive; she has, after all, saved the family and run the store for almost two decades. The sisters think this is ridiculous; she is not, they insist, a blood relative. Nothing gets done. Hideko is only vaguely aware of the proposal, because her brother-in-law won't talk about it. then he tells her the secret he has been silent about for so long:he is in love with her.

Here's Mikio Naruse again, plowing the same patch he did for so many years, the Shomin-Gekim. He was often compared to Ozu, to his own detriment. Although he produced masterpieces, there is nowhere near as much consideration of his work. He did not concern himself with the workings of the family, but with the individual, usually the oppressed woman (although Kamaya suffers for his love, Miss Takamine is not even permitted to consider the matter): very bad! His focus is not the collective. He does not plant his camera humbly on the mat and look at his subject through long, unmoving takes: very bad! How is a film critic supposed to recognize his style? He does not use the same actors, over and again, in much the same roles: very bad! A true auteur tells the same story, over and over! His characters suffer the strictures of society, with only private tears: very bad! The bourgeouisie win again!

It's a false dichotomy, as if by admiring Ozu more, we must despise his colleagues. I admire Ozu greatly, and I also admire Naruse, who told his tales of woe with great compassion and despair, and did so with fine actors. As he does here.

I saw this film in French, with the title "Une Femme Dans La Tourmente". A year later I still think about it. Postwar Japan is gearing up for the period of "rapid growth", and many of the small family-owned businesses and the families that run them are being swept away. Reiko has supported her late husband's family with her indefatigable work throughout the war and still cooks, cleans and takes up the slack. The family was quite happy to take advantage of her hard work during the hard days, but now that their remaining son is old enough to marry they find her an embarrassment. The son is a lazy young man, used to going with the flow and frankly not trying very hard at anything. When a modern supermarket chain comes to their area, many small shops are going to the wall. Should they continue to struggle on as they are, or sell out for what they can get? Reiko faces her own decision: stay or go? And if she goes, where?

I have all the respect in the world for Mikio Naruse, I really do. His films always touch on things that are still relevant- he's good at exploring timeless themes. His films always have good acting, and are also always nice to look at. They're also tremendously empathetic, and focus far more on female characters than many films from the 1950s and 60s. In that way, they also feel forward-thinking and maybe even radical.

But at the same time, I do always find them slow-going and a little hard to really get into it. There's a certain distance I feel every time I watch one of his movies, even while I recognise they're very well-made. And there's no proper criticisms I can make about it; not more than saying I just find his films a little boring.

It's a me problem. I still respect what he did as a filmmaker, and I do understand why he's so highly regarded. His movies just aren't really for me - not any I've seen yet, at least.