A Hen in the Wind

For a while, I've felt like Ozu's titles would work well as lines in haikus. Well, the English versions. Maybe the Japanese originals also retain the right number of syllables, but A Hen in the Wind is five syllables, like the opening line of a haiku. It's also an evocative image that instantly calls to mind potential symbolism, symbolism that follows through from the film itself, a woman caught up in circumstances outside of her control, trying to find some way to land. I do think the film, though, is one of Ozu's unsung masterpieces. This movie crushed me a bit. It's right in this perfect place between melodrama and character-based storytelling, the sort of thing Ozu is not as famous for but could obviously handle really well.

Tokiko (Kinuyo Tanaka) is married to Shuichi (Shuji Sano) who has not been home in four years since before the end of the war. Their son, Hiroshi, has no living memory of his father. Left alone for years, Tokiko has managed to carve out a half-way decent, but impoverished life, maintaining a household that feels like a home for Shuichi's return. Things go wrong with Hiroshi suddenly becomes sick, requiring medical help including ten days in the hospital, something she simply does not have the money for. Through her friend Akiko (Chieko Murata), she knows of a madame who runs a geisha house on the far side of Tokyo. Desperate, Tokiko takes the job for one night to get the money, a choice she does not share with Akiko. And then, of course, Shuichi comes home.

So, what's going on here? It feels like slightly heightened melodrama, delving a bit into the realm of scandalous with Tokiko going into prostitution (all off-screen, of course), but what elevates it above melodrama is the characters and how Ozu approaches telling stories in general. He's not interested in sensationalism (I'm actually regularly reminded of how Clint Eastwood films things), telling his stories in purposefully reserved terms, so when he does deal with stronger emotion, it stands out more. Throw in the fact that these actors are holding back, even at their most emotional moments, and you've got a recipe for drama without melodrama. And that's where emotional power rests quietly.

So, Tokiko has to reveal to Shuichi what she did. It's just the right thing to do, even though she knows it could completely tear her entire life apart. Shuichi gets depressed and angry, confiding in his friend at work, Satake (Chishu Ryu), and deciding to track down the geisha house where she worked. Why? Maybe to find out if she's telling the whole truth and not holding something back. Maybe to get back at her by submitting to temptation. It's not clear, and it's not supposed to be because it's not clear for Shuichi. He's angry, and he's acting out. Until he meets the prostitute he could have relations with, Akiko (Chieko Murata), and he calms down, talking to her about her situation.

There could be a reading that the film excuses prostitution (Ozu apparently wrote about using comfort women while stationed in China in his published diary), but I don't think that's what he's doing. He's telling a story after a war, a time with countless terrible things having happened, and no word at all about Shuichi's involvement in any kind of specifics. What did he do? What did he do that would anger Tokiko? Surely there's something...including comfort women (none of this is explicit, by the way, I'm just trying to approach the material intelligently). He can't rule his emotions so quickly after a shock, but he can learn to get past them.

And the movie actually ends with a surprising shock of violence (melodramatic touch), and then the quiet of an Ozu film. That period of reflection is always key to an Ozu film, and here it's vital. We, along with the characters, consider what has happened, the implications and the potential consequences, all while the film is still going. It's a wonderful way to approach things, and one that's so easily done wrong. Ozu just knows exactly where to put these pauses, and he uses them exquisitely.

Really, this is a marvelous gem of a film. It's one I'd never heard of, and one I think deserves more attention. It's great.

A sensitive and powerful examination of the moral compromises made during World War II and the toll they take on families. Kinuyo Tanaka gives another of her sensitive and compelling performances as a woman forced into prostitution to care for her sick child, and is unable to keep her secret when her husband returns from the front. Ozu takes on the topic of prostitution while steering well clear of its potential for sordidness (something I find both a virtue and a limitation... in some ways it's *too* tactful). The scenes between the two exceptional leads contribute to a film blessed with some of the most uncomortable scenes Ozu has filmed, delving deep into raw unresolved emotions of guilt, honor and devotion.

Ozu's late film are far more varied than "common wisdom" would have it -- but, by any measure, "Hen in the Wind" (from 1948) is especially "atypical". This is the only Ozu film I've seen (out of 21 or 20) that has a tangible (and even raw) physicality -- it is more like proto-Imamura than "standard" Ozu (no -- Imamura was not yet working as Ozu's assistant -- that only began around 1951). Characters crawl, slither, and slide about. Sometimes, visually oversized bare feet stick into the foreground. Kinuyo Tanaka loses all self possession at the climax, and practically keens her dialog -- at a much higher pitch than I've ever heard her use in any other film.

This is an interesting story that deals with the collateral damage caused by WW2 (and the ensuing occupation) -- as it affected the lives of one young married couple. It was a flop with the audience, I guess -- so it became a path not traveled further. Artistically, it may not be completely successful, but it was a worthy effort.

It is not one of Yasujiro Ozu's best films. Both just after the war he made Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947) and the Late Spring (1949) but this one comes between these two. The others are fine but not this one, it is not terrible but it is that, we know what is going to happen. The husband is away in the war and she is having to sell her clothes so she can feed her toddler. It gets more sad for her when he is unwell and naturally the hospital bills have to be paid. Even she knows what she will have to do and her friend mentions what she can do. We don't see her prostitute herself but we know and of course her husband is soon back home lazing around and has to find out how she had got the money. Raping her and throwing her down the stairs are because he is rather upset and that he felt unmanly. We can't really comprehend this couple, especially because of the war, but certainly in Japan we can just about understand how it is for them.

Tokiko faces a terrible moral dilemma. Her husband is absent, her son is sick and she is in dire need of money to fund his treatment. When her husband returns, they both must come to terms with her decision. This film is a reminder that war's ugly face doesn't show itself exclusively on the battlefield, its aftermath can be felt long after the bloodshed is over. Ozu approaches this dark subject matter with remarkable sensibility and leaves room for a glimpse of hope in the end.