Cinema is good because cinema is true. What Good Morning does is it transcends a structure into a realm comprising of all too familiar moments of life. It presents to us a story, with a beginning and an end, firmly rooted in an introspective context.
I say “a beginning and an end” because it follows a line of thought until it follows through it. The film holds a spotlight thrown over the lives of the movie’s characters. With Isamu, Minoru, Setsuko and their relations that ground one as much as it uplifts the other.
The film is Yasujiro Ozu’s perspective of form over language. He wants you to lean in toward the film and not the other way around. And to reciprocate, the film feels luminously free-spirited and boundless. It’s a persistent film with subtle yet isolated characters. The film consists of many cues that are effective at delivering a message. Like the boys pressing each other’s foreheads to fart, the little boy saying “I love you” before leaving the house, the wives bitching about each other in a rather detached and forlorn manner or the husbands struggling to cope with retirement and authority.
It’s a wholesome film exhibiting exquisite personality. To watch it is to appreciate a film in its purest and subliminal form. This is a start. Discovering Yasujiro Ozu’s intricate, transcendental, and influential storytelling technique. I look forward to all his films, especially Tokyo Story.
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