Abstract
As one of the most ambiguous moments in the history of cinema, the sequence with the vase in Late Spring (Yasujirô Ozu, 1949) has garnered considerable critical attention. Engaging with a range of influential or rewarding accounts of the moment, this chapter outlines some key features of ambiguity to be explored in the rest of the book. By doing so, it also examines the critical assumptions of these analyses and elaborates the characteristics of a satisfying account of ambiguity. Ambiguity is a challenge to criticism, as the puzzling scene in Late Spring suggests, not only because it is difficult to “answer” but because our “answering” also calls for the identification of the appropriate “why” questions. The criticism of ambiguity activates an analytical dynamics of question-and-answer.
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Notes
- 1.
This straightforward outline doesn’t aim to convey the intricacy of the plot. For the purposes of this chapter, I won’t be able to explore the narrative in detail. But it is crucial to acknowledge how much is left unsaid or unsettled in the film, especially regarding character motives, actions, and feelings. To begin with, it seems that Shukichi pretends to remarry in order to relieve Noriko of caring responsibility, as he has come to believe that it would be best for her to start her own family. Also, Noriko says she finds remarriages “distasteful”. But, arguably, her father’s “remarriage” upsets her because she feels deserted. She enjoys her father’s company and would like to go on taking care of him. Her subsequent, sudden decision to wed then sounds like an impulsive act—if not something like a retaliation—in response to his “desertion”. There is a sense that Noriko hasn’t been thinking about marriage at all. She is independent and wouldn’t want to marry just because it is socially expected for a woman at a certain suitable age. This social pressure, expressly voiced by her aunt, adds to Noriko’s frustration. All of which is suggested but not affirmed by the movie. What is otherwise a melodramatic plot is treated undramatically by Ozu.
- 2.
What is it that demarcates a scene? How do we distinguish one scene from another? The notion of the scene has received little critical reflection, often taken for granted, despite being an indispensable vocabulary to film analysis (a similar case with related terms such as “vignette” and “set-piece”). It is not my intention here to advocate—film semiotics-style—a theoretical pursuit of what defines this “basic cinematic unit”. But a close attention to what makes a scene a scene in an individual film can sometimes enrich our understanding and appreciation. Intuitively, a scene appears to be what contains a single action, scenario, or setting. In this sense, the shots of the rocks in Ryōan-ji mark a new scene in Late Spring by introducing a new milieu. But these tranquil images also feel like something of a response to or a continuation of the enigmatic shot “exchanges” between the vase and Noriko. The demarcation between scenes is not always distinct and definite. The shots with the vase and the images of the rock garden invite us to consider them together, rather than as separate, self-contained situations. This is an aspect that most accounts neglect. I have previously raised this issue in Law (2014).
- 3.
For a systematic account of cinematic metalepsis, see Lash (2020).
- 4.
The Japanese aesthetic concept of mu underpins Richie’s understanding of Ozu. Mu draws our attention to the fact that “emptiness and silence are a part of the work, a positive ingredient. It is silence which gives meaning to the dialogue that went before; it is emptiness which gives meaning to the action that went before” (1974, 174).
- 5.
- 6.
Kijū Yoshida similarly sees the vase shot as a diffusion of audience attention. However, his reading is based on his understanding of the moment’s psychosexual subtext: “When the viewers look at the shot of the vase abruptly inserted into the scene, they cannot help staring at it. They are forced to think about the meaning of the vase and interpret it. Such a moment forcing them to think distracts them from imagining the daughter’s desire to be embraced by her father, or any woman’s desire to make love with a man. For Ozu-san, the vase in the moonlight is an image of purification and redemption” (2003, 80). In his article on what he calls “puzzling movies”, Norman N. Holland (1963) similarly suggests how ambiguous form may serve as a cover for uncomfortable content. The divide between form and content that these accounts pivot upon is questionable. But the idea that ambiguity is something that steals and absorbs our attention is a key characteristic of the concept that I wish to capture in this book, especially in Chap. 6.
- 7.
- 8.
As Pudovkin writes: “we chose close-ups which were static and which did not express any feeling at all”. Another important claim of the concept is that distinctive meanings can be produced by intercutting the same expressionless close-up with different views.
- 9.
The problem with this view, as V.F. Perkins notes, is that it “assume[s] from the start the irrelevance of all matters of lighting, make-up, camera angle and framing to the theoretical issues; assume, in fact, that the content of any specific presentation of a particular face is adequately described by the word ‘face’ or, worse still, ‘close-up’” (1993, 106).
- 10.
Klevan (2012) discusses the importance of attending to the movement of meaning, as well as the challenges of addressing it, in relation to good film performances.
- 11.
Bordwell takes this assumption to be shared by Schrader and Richie. But it seems to me Schrader is interested in neither what Noriko sees nor what leads to her changed expression. He uses the moment to illustrate the transcendental style. Even though Richie’s remark on the vase as something “shown” to her hardly negates Bordwell’s charge, it gestures towards a more complex view of the moment than the simplistic reading that Bordwell rejects.
- 12.
An analogous instance of unusual implication can be found in The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1946), where a shot of a character pressing a button is sandwiched between two shots that depict the happening of a car accident. It appears that this character has “caused” that accident. “[T]his impression of causality”, George M. Wilson remarks, “is difficult to reconcile with common sense and difficult also to integrate into our immediate sense of the film’s narrative development at that juncture” (1986, 2). This moment is more puzzling than the sequence in Late Spring (which contradicts our understanding of space but not much of our immediate sense of the narrative), but it equally invites a non-literal reading and requires us to adopt an enlarged conception of causality.
- 13.
I have in mind Sara Ahmed’s suggestion: “Happiness can involve a gesture of deferral, as a deferral that is imagined simultaneously as a sacrifice and gift: for some, the happiness that is given up becomes what they give” (2010, 33). In Late Spring , Shukichi is the giver of happiness. But we can also say that Noriko has given up a life she is content with. He sacrifices his so that she can make a bid for hers; she gives up hers because she wants him to acquire his. The film invites us to compare and contrast their respective sacrifices.
- 14.
Repetition is key to the parametric narration. But Bordwell and Thompson would likely take it to be a mark of playfulness or formal excess. In fact, Thompson’s argument of arbitrariness could have some difficulties accommodating the repeated shots with the vase. Their effect of insistence creates a sense of irreplaceability. Also, if distraction is the aim, why does Ozu return to Noriko after the cutaway? Wouldn’t avoiding dwelling on her be a more effective way to prevent us from “taking this [the moment] as the emotional climax of the film”? Why lingers on the moment by cutting to the vase again?
- 15.
Note that Rothman’s reading, his claim about the scenario’s changing implication, requires the two cutaways to stand for “the same thought”. Put another way, the shots assume different suggestions for the viewer not despite but because of their identical meaning to Noriko. This disparity of significance is analogous to the gap between what something means in the fictional world and its expanded narrative meaning discussed earlier.
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Law, H.L. (2021). Difficulty of Reading. In: Ambiguity and Film Criticism. Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62945-8_2
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