Drawings of the actress Setsuko Hara by Meiro Koizumi
I am especially fascinated by the way he (Yasujiro Ozu) directed actors. Actually the
characters in his films have some similarity to the subjects of (Bruce) Nauman’s
videos, in the sense that depictions of the inner self are stripped
down to set of gestures within a rigid framework. Ozu’s films are like
puppet shows using bodies of real actors. He never believed in
conventional filmic language; he wanted to create his own. And he
achieved it, inventing this very strange filmic language that no one can
copy. On the surface, everything looks so ordinary and undramatic, but
once you become aware of the layer behind this surface, you realize how
dark and pessimistic his visions were.
