Late Spring

“Ozu. Ozu is a filmmaker who... Didn’t give a shit about a lot of rules. Most importantly, the 180-degree line. What I’m going to talk to you about with Ozu right now, in this movie, is his capacity for the most emotional endings you’ll ever see in your life. Late Spring is a great example of this. It’s a story about a father and a daughter at its heart. Watching this movie, along with making my first film, Fruitvale Station, made me realize that I wanted to be a father.”

“And Late Spring, where is that? Ozu, one of my favorite directors. And what he does is so simple, you know, the camera's on sticks, it's about three feet off the ground and a 50 millimeter lens. And he just lets it stay and lets the characters work the frame. And what happens is that he focuses so much, here it is, he focuses on intimate relationships and by kind of the repetition of the routines of the characters you get to know them in a way that you would know someone in your own family.”

“And then it would be nice to come back to the Ozu, now that I'm way older than I was in film school, and see how I feel about it. That'd be cool.”

“[Translated] Speaking of Akira Kurosawa, there's also Yasujiro Ozu. There's Tokyo Story and others, but I like Late Spring the best. Setsuko Hara is captured most beautifully in this one. The bicycle scene is great. Today is Setsuko Hara's birthday, so it's a coincidence, but I love this work.”

“[Translated] Ozu's Late Spring. I don't have this Blu-ray yet, so I'll take this first.”