SARNOWSKI ON OZU

The day after a viewing of Ozu's
THE FLAVOR OF GREEN TEA OVER RICE

Ryan Sarnowski: My heart was crippled last night

Wes Tank: I know the Ozu feeling

Ryan: Those moments when the wife is alone, after the maid has gone to bed...lordy!

Wes: How do you feel about the acting in Ozu's films?

Ryan: I think it's great, because its a weird blend of naturalism and unnaturalism. You have to watch the moments when people are not talking to see how they are really feeling. If anything he shows that our words are not usually what we really have to say about a situation and yet there can be those times like when the husband tells the wife that their marriage is a sour product of arranged marriages that the natural and unnatural collide.

Wes: Could you expand on what you were saying last night about the way our understanding of the relationships changes throughout the film?

Ryan: The husband says he is comfortable with simple things and he wrestles with his wife's desires to live more extravagently. She sees him as a simpleton and yet he appears to see right through her lies, even accepts them, or does he? The husband has grown so accustomed to her ways that they have in essence become simple to him. He knows that if she wants to do something, she'll lie about it and go do it.

He also knows that she'll harp on him for being simple, for slurping his food and while it makes his life more aggrevating in one degree the simple knowing that she's going to do these things provides comfort. At the same time the wife plays this role of a bitch almost of the amusement of her friends, but deep down she has grown to love him, because he is simple and lets her get away with this shit, but why does he let her.

Their love is a strange balancing act. They also have these odd relations to the concept of arranged marriage. The wife is more pragmatic, thinking that such an institution allows women to find a mate who is suitable for supporting a woman. The husband seems to see the limitations in such arrangements but he's also the one who first scolds the niece. There really is no clear resting point throughout the film as to how they feel about each other, marriage, etc. Things are constantly shifting

Wes: Do you think that has to do with this tension between what the characters are saying/what their faces say when they are not speaking?

Ryan: Exactly. Its more obvious in the husband. Especially when he just answers in one word. You can see him thinking. The same is true with the old military pal. There is a range of emotions going on as two parts of his life come face to face.

Wes: Do you think this is something inherent in all of Ozu's films, or is it particular to just this one?

Ryan: All of them. Most of them. He does have lesser films. Like some of the early ones. But even in his silent era there are great works.

Wes: Do you care to comment on his consistent use of centered shot reverse shots?
Where does his completely consistent, yet totally unique shooting language come from?

Ryan: I would gather that it comes from the simple act of sitting on a mat, across a table from another individual. So much of his style is indicative of the simple act of sitting on a floor in a traditional Japanese house.

Wes: More than any other filmmaker, his work gives me a sense that he has such a firmly rooted sense of the present, as well as the "bigger picture."

Ryan: What I find so amazing about him is how he takes these simple, almost hackneyed stories and wrings cosmic truth out of them.

Wes: If only he could be reincarnated into the body of a soap opera director.

Ryan: yes, that would be nice. But people would just sleep through it... :)

Wes: DAYTIME TELEVISION, HELLO

Ryan: He'd have to sex it up, a lot.

THE GIRLS

In college I made two videos with about my sisters, Alli and Ann Tank.
I have always enjoyed their energy and philosophies on life.
Between the two videos you can see my shooting/editing style changes dramatically, but their stance on the inherent goodness of the universe remains unchanged.

UP AND DOWN AND ROUND ABOUT



THE BARN SWALLOWS

THE STILL SMALL VOICE WITHIN