Thursday, April 5, 2018
All in the Family
Early Summer shows the relationship between two aged parents, their grown children and their grandchildren. The young children are rebellious and demanding. The grandparents try to buy their grandchildren's affection. The parents and brother try to manage the younger sister's life. Choices about everything from buying an expensive cake to choosing to marry (and to whom one marries) have implications for everyone. Eventually the family so painstakingly captured in a photograph breaks up, as Noriko marries and moves to the provinces and her parents move near the great uncle. How accurate is this portrayal of family life? Is this a "slice of life" (and part of the reason it feels as if "nothing happens")? Does this remind you of your family? Is this how families work? Focus on one scene or character and discuss what it tells us about the dynamics of family life.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The film Early Summer is a slice of life for a potential family, and it is neither a template which all families follow nor an outlier that no one can relate to. Personally, the family and its changes reminds me of my own in a few ways but deviates from it in others. I can relate to the changing family structure even though its changes are not exactly what happened to mine. I am lucky enough to live very close to my grandparents, which I can somewhat equate to the parents living in the household in the movie. In addition, my father left the family when I was young, and in just a few years my brother and I will be moving on to college and my family may never live under the same roof again. Knowing that these changes happen and experiencing one firsthand helps me realize that the changes in Early Summer are very possible and realistic but not guaranteed. For example, a family may very well be a large group of people that stays together in the same house for the entirety of their lives or a group that splits and never completely reforms. Many different kinds of families are possible, and they all share similarities and differences. As a result, all people can relate Noriko’s family to their own in some way; and so Early Summer accurately depicts family and life changes and is a slice of everyone’s lives.
ReplyDeleteThe life of the family in the film Early Summer is a perfect example of the complexities that can occur in any normal family. While they may not contain the exact same situations, most families generally have to deal with different problems and manage living with each other. Following a Japanese family, this film is able to capture a specific “slice of life” that relies on traditional culture but at the same time deals with the changing in culture of the world around them. This can be seen with the different attitudes of the family members, based on their ages and what they are exposed to. The older generation clearly is more focused on helping the family grow as they show interest in Noriko’s future. The father, mother, and brother are completely involved with finding Noriko a husband, making sure to scout everything out. On the other hand, the younger generation is looking to grow and take care of themselves before anyone else. Noriko, herself, is worrying about what she will be doing with the rest of her life, whether it involves getting married or focusing on her job. Even the younger kids are worrying about themselves, figuring out how they can annoy their parents until they get a new train set. This clash of opinions is actually quite common even today. With my family for example, we don’t worry about arranged marriages per se but everyone has a different agenda, whether thinking for others or themselves.
ReplyDeleteWhat is interesting about the film is that in a way it does capture a slice of life, but the slice includes both the repetitive nature and the sudden changes. At times the film seems long and drawn out, and that is because there aren’t major changes happening. This is reflective of our real day to day lives because we don’t undergo significant changes every day. While it is true that things are constantly progressing and changing in life, those small differences don’t seem significant until they all culminate in one major change in your life. For me, this major change would be college. It has been slowing progressing and building up in my life but things still pretty slow and regular and will continue to be until I actually head off to college. The film follows this same pattern. Hints at Noriko’s wedding start early in the film, like the scene where she is talking with one of her friends who is telling her about how nice it is to be married, and continues to progress throughout the film while still feeling very slow. The filmmakers didn’t skip and cut to the major events but rather focused on the slow progression to create more realistic flow. Then in the end When Noriko does get married, that becomes the large event that has been slowly building up throughout the movie.
ReplyDeleteWhen watching Early Summer there were many moments when this film was unmistakably similar to the Lumiere brother’s actualite films such as Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat. I thought this especially in the scenes where the family was sitting on the floor around the table because of the still camera and the fact that it looked like a genuine family dinner with no dramatic acting just everyday life which was how it was in actualite’s. I definitely think that the directors did a great job at accurately portraying the dynamics of a family. I think this specifically when it comes to Noriko because the dynamic she has with her family is very relatable. She is in a tough spot in her life where she is a mother, yet still living with her parents because she is not married. She is constantly struggling to find her place in adulthood and in her family which is very relatable to my life now because as I am going to college next year I consider myself an adult, but my parents don’t yet consider me an adult because I live under their roof. She is really faced with this when she tries to convince her parents that she is making the right decision in marrying. Her family questions her over and over again to make sure she won’t regret this in the future. This type of parental worry and child rebellion at the same time of seeking approval is very relatable in many families no matter the age of the child.
ReplyDeleteI think Ozu shows a representation of a family that is greatly separated by time periods and the respect they expect to be shown and the respect that they had given to their elders while at a young age. The grandparents in the film always seem to care for the families, only wanting the best outcome for them. The parents, or the younger parents, seem to have a great respect for their elders when they are always getting things approved by their parents, this shows that they appreciate the experiences and knowledge of their elders. The two young boys show little to no respect to their parents or grandparents. They lied to their mother about washing their faces and then were acting disrespectful when they did not receive the specific train set they wanted. They were very fortunate to have a loving mother because they father said that he would have beaten them for showing such disrespect. I also think it is important to recognize the fact that they ran away and were trying to avoid their family. Not only were they scaring their family by running away, but they called their great uncle an idiot and showed him no respect for who he is in their family or the life experiences that he has had. I think that the older generation apprecitated family more and showed more respect compared to the youngest generation where everything had to satisfy their needs and they needed to be the center of attention. It shows that the newer generations are becoming more and more disrespectful and hopeless due to their lack of understanding that they need their elders to guide them through their experiences.
ReplyDeleteI feel like the family life in Early Summer is not very much like the family life we have in America. It’s kind of like the opposite of my family. One example is how the little boys in the movie are not very respectful to the older people. Like in one scene the little boy is calling the grandpa an idiot and does it because the grandpa is deaf. And in another scene the little boy thinks that his dad got him some train tracks, but it was really just bread. When he found this out the little boy went to his dad and yelled at him and kicked the bread. In both of these cases the little boy acts very disrespectful to people older than him which is looked very down upon in our society. We are taught to respect our elders and also to just straight up not be disrespectful to anyone. But in the movie the little boy disrespects his grandpa and his parent which not many children in our society, or at least I wouldn’t do. Something else that is not very much like the family life we have that is in the movie is when the parents and brother of Noriko kind of question and like need to approve of who Noriko is going to marry. When they find out who Noriko was going to marry, they all questioned her and asking if she was sure this is what she wanted. And then when Noriko talks to the mother of her future husband, the mom asks Noriko if she got her parent’s approval showing that it’s a normal thing in their culture to get their parents approval for marriage. However in our society, we don’t necessarily need our parents to approve of who we’re going to marry. Yes it’s nice if our parents and the person we’re getting married to get along and everything, but we wouldn’t get married just because our parents don’t approve. Because of this I think that the family life in the film is very different of the family life we have in America.
ReplyDeleteEarly Summer uses Noriko's family as an example not to give insight into family dynamics, but rather it's a commentary on how traditional Japan is changing following World War II. Japan has had the longstanding legacy in families that the young would respect the elders, but throughout Early Summer we see a clear disrespect by the two children towards their grandparents. One particular scene that I remember was when the two boys were making fun of their Grandpa. The Grandpa is sitting in his chair in this scene enjoying himself and the two boys come up to him. The older boy begins to taunt his Grandpa, even though he's oblivious to his grandson's disrespect. The two young boys vulgar attitude toward not only their grandparents, but their parents as well show how Japanese society has begun to evolve following the events of World War II. This scene also shows the viewer not only how family dynamics are straying away from their traditional roots, but that people are accepting this changing culture. The Grandpa's bliss ignorance of his grandson's rude actions towards him may appear to the viewer as a sign of his old age, but this scene has a bigger message in my opinion. The way he smiles towards his grandsons despite the insults that they tell him to his face is a metaphor for how the older generations are accepting the deterioration of longstanding rules in a family. This isn't to stay that the Grandpa condones the disrespect show by his grandchildren, but the intention is to show how he's accepting the societal changes. Early Summer uses the family to analyze the unique relationships among the characters, but also to show how their values are changing, for better or worse. The unwritten family expectations may be changing during this era in Japan, but Early Summer uses this example to show how people have their priorities out of order. This film criticizes how people, like the Grandpa, are accepting of change, they have lost sight of what's important. The idea of youth respecting their elders is a value that the film values, but it rejects many other common expectations of Japanese culture. For example, the film uses the idea that marriage has to be approved by parents as a limiting lifestyle choice. Noriko's marriage to her longtime friend, shows that whether her parents do or don't approve of a potential husband has little importance. I believe that while it's important to consultant with others for major life decisions, like marriage, people shouldn't be limited in their life by their family. Respecting your elders is a good way to promote obedience in children, but that doesn't mean that children are forbidden to disagree with their parents. Early Summers is commentary on the evolving family dynamics in Japanese society, and how the values and expectations being changed are limiting the growth of individuals.
ReplyDelete