Japanese Film: Ozu\'s \'Good Morning\'

Japanese Film: Ozu's 'Good Morning'

Good Morning-Ohayo (Japanese) (Yasujiro Ozu, 1959) is focused on an event from Tokyo during the early 1950s. The action in the movie takes place in an environment that is apparently experience a "Westernization" process influencing people's thinking and their perception toward matters that had just entered their culture. It is difficult to determine whether the film is meant to criticize the fact that the Japanese society came to be shaped by the West or if it actually encouraged people in becoming more open-minded regarding influences coming in from the Occident. The motion picture is generally meant to put across an episode involving a Japanese suburban community as it struggles to maintain its cultural values as it gets constantly bombarded with new ideas.

The first scenes in the film show Mrs. Hayashi as she is comes to be criticized by her neighbors because of her presumably vengeful attitude. Most of the action in the motion picture revolves around the two young boys of the Hayashi family. In spite of the fact that most individuals in the community has enough money for a TV set, most of them are reluctant to acquire one because they consider that it would be unconventional for them to do so. Children are less biased and less concerned about cultural values and are in point of fact attracted by their noncomformist neighbors. The fact that the wife in the eccentric family is a cabaret dancer only adds to the feeling that the Japanese society as portrayed in the film is yet unable to assimilate information and concepts coming into the country from the West. The two plots in the movie are interweaved at the point when the two boys refuse to say hello to their neighbors, making them feel that it is Mrs. Hayashi who is really responsible for the children's behavior.

The film's plot is set in a community in Tokyo and it relates to a community that has trouble understanding Western concepts and that is generally inclined to reject ideas that it considered to be non-traditional. In spite of the fact that the Hayashi family is initially inclined to join the majority of their neighbors in considering that it would be immoral to adopt Western values, it gradually changes the way it thinks as its members realize that it is essential for them and for their community to abandon their preconceptions. The film is about rather ordinary events taking place in an environment that experiences a forceful change. Adults practically contrast children through their thinking and the way that they behave, considering that in spite of the fact that they talk while the children are on a silent strike, they fail to put across thorough thought and only manage to fuel each-other's prejudiced nature. Isamu and Minoru are intriguing through the fact that they manage to display clever and sincere acting, demonstrating that they had a special relationship with the director and that they collaborated in making it possible for the film to express authentic feelings. The fact that their actual role in the film regards their interest in criticizing their parents over their reluctance to say what they think when they think it adds to the thought that the children take on a more rational character. This makes their parents better acquainted with their condition and with how it is essential for them to reform their lives and the way that they think in order to reestablish the relationship they had with their children and so as for them to feel less guilty concerning how they never express themselves as they want to.