There Was a Father (1942)

Everyone from school had gone on a picnic. There, in a boat accident, one student drowned. The teacher hadn’t known that some students were taking a boat ride. They hadn’t told anyone. But he took the entire responsibility for this tragedy upon his own shoulders. He said, “He was such an obedient student. It was my duty to keep track of where he was going, what he was doing. If I had been watchful and forbidden him, he would never have gone on that boat ride.” Out of tremendous grief and self-reproach, he decided to give up teaching. He had no right to take responsibility for students. A teacher’s duty isn’t merely to teach—looking after students also falls within his obligations. He had failed to do that; he was a failed teacher. He would never teach students again. With his motherless only son, he would move to another city and look for work other than teaching.

And that’s exactly what he did. This is the story of such a self-respecting father and his son in “There Was a Father” (1942). The movie’s plot is utterly simple, straightforward. In this film we see how effortlessly a simple life’s story can be told! Rabindranath’s “Simple words cannot be written simply” becomes quite false in the face of Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu’s mastery of filmmaking.

Those who have seen the Noriko Trilogy (“Late Spring” (1949), “Early Summer” (1951), and “Tokyo Story” (1953)), “Late Autumn” (1960), “An Autumn Afternoon” (1962), “The Only Son” (1936), “An Inn in Tokyo” (1935), and other films know about Ozu’s extraordinariness. The stories of his films are quite ordinary. While watching, one thinks, “Why, this is my own story!” or “How did he know my family’s story!” To understand Japanese culture, one must see Ozu! The characters in his films are like people from the house next door—we recognize them at first sight, we meet them often, we talk with them. Every story seems like a very familiar story to us. That story isn’t Japanese, but eternal.

It’s very difficult to be simpler and more lucid than Ozu. We’ve heard such humane stories from very few filmmakers. In narrating tales of human relationships, Ozu is fluent, natural, and perfect. His films can be watched with a calm, untroubled mind. During and after viewing, a kind of simplicity-touched enchantment plays in the heart. There’s no extra pressure, no suspense, no climax—just experiencing the story with an unburdened mind. Watching Ozu’s films is like reading Bhaskar Chakrabarty’s prose. While watching, one feels sleepy, but after watching, thinking about what I’ve seen, I can’t sleep at all! That feeling is deeply comforting. Even a filmmaker like Kurosawa considered Ozu his master!

Those who love classic cinema must repeatedly return to Ozu, Kurosawa, and Mizoguchi. Without loving these masters, one’s love of cinema remains incomplete.