by Jeremy Meckler
This review is our fourth entry in the Joyless Canon—our 100 favorite movies, from enshrined classics to guilty pleasures to left-field oddities, which (we hope) define our personalities as film-lovers. Every few weeks, we’ll analyze another of our canonical entries in-depth. Check out our Index page for other Joyless Canon (JC) selections.
This review is our fourth entry in the Joyless Canon—our 100 favorite movies, from enshrined classics to guilty pleasures to left-field oddities, which (we hope) define our personalities as film-lovers. Every few weeks, we’ll analyze another of our canonical entries in-depth. Check out our Index page for other Joyless Canon (JC) selections.
The film begins with the Yoshi family moving to a new town. The boys, Ryoichi (Hideo Sugawara, the older brother) and Keiju (Tomio Aoki, the younger) watch with a mix of awe and boredom as their father takes off his suit jacket to help push the moving truck out of the mud. The shots are the low-angles that are so prevalent in Ozu’s films, but while on the whole these are known as “tatami shots”—named for the tatami mat flooring in traditional Japanese architecture—they feel here as if they have more to do with portraying Ryoichi and Keiju’s perspectives. The world as visualized from this position is alien and abstract, so that we—like the Yoshi boys—feel a sense of lackadaisical whimsy. It’s interesting to watch Dad move the truck, but there’s no sense of urgency or direction.Yasujiro Ozu’s silent parable begins with a simple title card reading “A Picture Book for Grownups.” And really, more than any of his other films, I Was Born, But… does adopt a child’s perspective.
Once the family settles in, the narrative perspective is still so tightly focused on the children that it’s hard to notice other things going on. A sub-narrative focuses on the father, whose motivation for moving to this town is more fiscal in nature. This is the same sleepy suburb where his boss lives, and he sees moving here as a good way to curry favor inside the company. But the boys have different concerns; a group of local kids decide to pick on them, motivated by the assertion from Kamekichi, the largest member of this gang, that Keiju has “a face like a bug.” (That insult has the perfect blend of cruelty, naiveté, and incongruousness to be hurled by a real eight-year-old.) The relatively simple narrative follows Ryoichi and Keiju through the trials of pre-adolescent male society. They skip school to avoid getting beat up, get in trouble, and try various schemes to improve their social standing.
It’s really a standard story, but what’s so great about it is the unrepentant strangeness smuggled into its archetypical structure. Kamekichi, in some misguided pre-masculine feat of strength, eats raw robin’s eggs to intimidate the other boys, leading to a robin’s egg-based economic substructure among the grade-schoolers. Ryoichi and Keiju are so impressed by this that they feed a robin’s egg to their dog to try to make this 20-pound terrier into “a great fighter.” And other things are just as weird. Every time the boys are about to get into a tussle, Keiju whips off his wooden sandals and holds them like they were brass knuckles. (When they actually do fight, we get to see him whap other little boys with them ineffectually.) In short, the whole thing is written with a powerful kind of kid-logic, a force that subsumes even the artfully composed shots of modernizing Japan.
It’s really a standard story, but what’s so great about it is the unrepentant strangeness smuggled into its archetypical structure. Kamekichi, in some misguided pre-masculine feat of strength, eats raw robin’s eggs to intimidate the other boys, leading to a robin’s egg-based economic substructure among the grade-schoolers. Ryoichi and Keiju are so impressed by this that they feed a robin’s egg to their dog to try to make this 20-pound terrier into “a great fighter.” And other things are just as weird. Every time the boys are about to get into a tussle, Keiju whips off his wooden sandals and holds them like they were brass knuckles. (When they actually do fight, we get to see him whap other little boys with them ineffectually.) In short, the whole thing is written with a powerful kind of kid-logic, a force that subsumes even the artfully composed shots of modernizing Japan.
Importantly, the local boys also play a game. The leader of a group can do a certain hand signal and any other kid will drop to the ground, playing dead until they are revived by another specific hand signal. Their willingness to lay down and obey the rules of the game are direct indicators of their social status. When Ryoichi won’t lay down for Kamekichi, it’s an affront and the cause of a fight. The meaninglessness of this game, and its real-life consequences (bruises and hurt feelings) are a perfect analogue for the discovery the boys will make later in the film, and their strange power struggle with the local kids is made all the more realist in its connection to little boy machismo.
Toward the third act of the film, the tone shifts. The turbulence of their new arrival beginning to settle, the boys turn their attention to a stark realization—that their dad is not necessarily the most important man in town. If he were a little boy everyone else wouldn’t necessarily lie down for his hand gesture. Their friend Taro is the son of their father’s boss and when they learn about their father’s social standing in the office (he is a goofball apple polisher who bows to Taro’s father too much) their world is shattered. Ryoichi in particular is thrown for a loop by the power of wealth and status. “I’m stronger than Taro and I get better grades. If I have to work for him when I grow up, then I’m not going to school anymore.” It’s hard not to see the wisdom and guilelessness in Ryoichi’s assertion. But watching this take place—a sort of Freudian primal scene for the realities of life under capitalism—is remarkable. The whole film unfolds in 100 minutes, and about a week of story-time, but manages to distill capitalist society into one serving, served to Ryoichi neat.
Ozu’s script deftly and brilliantly translates a difficult concept—economic injustice—into terms that his pint-sized protagonists can understand. What started as an innocent childhood drama, about the trials of moving to a new town and making friends, has become a documentation of the formative economic moment. And the way they translate wealth, not into the conceptualized goods that it stands for, but instead into the same status-based “importance” that defines their interaction with other boys makes its revelations universal. When Ryoichi insists that his father not take any money from Taro’s dad anymore--“You pay him!”--he has extracted the exact drive that powers assholes and industrialists alike. He sees the way the whole of our world is little more than this children’s game, a meaningless set of rituals that play out in all too real ways in people’s lives. The story is at once universal and very personal—as Ryoichi’s parents talk about their sleeping sons’ futures they could be your parents talking about you but they are also the parents of these two weird, rambunctious boys. If ever there was a film that found the secret of capitalism, it lies here within Ryoichi’s epiphany.
Toward the third act of the film, the tone shifts. The turbulence of their new arrival beginning to settle, the boys turn their attention to a stark realization—that their dad is not necessarily the most important man in town. If he were a little boy everyone else wouldn’t necessarily lie down for his hand gesture. Their friend Taro is the son of their father’s boss and when they learn about their father’s social standing in the office (he is a goofball apple polisher who bows to Taro’s father too much) their world is shattered. Ryoichi in particular is thrown for a loop by the power of wealth and status. “I’m stronger than Taro and I get better grades. If I have to work for him when I grow up, then I’m not going to school anymore.” It’s hard not to see the wisdom and guilelessness in Ryoichi’s assertion. But watching this take place—a sort of Freudian primal scene for the realities of life under capitalism—is remarkable. The whole film unfolds in 100 minutes, and about a week of story-time, but manages to distill capitalist society into one serving, served to Ryoichi neat.
Ozu’s script deftly and brilliantly translates a difficult concept—economic injustice—into terms that his pint-sized protagonists can understand. What started as an innocent childhood drama, about the trials of moving to a new town and making friends, has become a documentation of the formative economic moment. And the way they translate wealth, not into the conceptualized goods that it stands for, but instead into the same status-based “importance” that defines their interaction with other boys makes its revelations universal. When Ryoichi insists that his father not take any money from Taro’s dad anymore--“You pay him!”--he has extracted the exact drive that powers assholes and industrialists alike. He sees the way the whole of our world is little more than this children’s game, a meaningless set of rituals that play out in all too real ways in people’s lives. The story is at once universal and very personal—as Ryoichi’s parents talk about their sleeping sons’ futures they could be your parents talking about you but they are also the parents of these two weird, rambunctious boys. If ever there was a film that found the secret of capitalism, it lies here within Ryoichi’s epiphany.
As a side note, and it feels like a side note really, this film is silent. The history of sound in Japanese cinema is worth a longer look—especially the way it led to a more participatory cinematic experience through the interjections of a live film narrator called a Benshi—but what’s really amazing about I Was Born, But… is the way it escapes cinematic conventions despite its technological limitations. That is to say, this is a silent film that doesn’t feel like a silent film (or at least not a Western silent film). There’s no slapstick comedy or hammy melodrama; there’s no sense of vaudeville to any of the acting. It’s as naturalistic and sedate as anything in the post-method world. I have seen this film many times, and yet every time I’m surprised to find that it is silent with inter-titles. In my memory, it is a sound film. Ozu’s editing is so taut, his timing so funny and charming, that you forget that there’s no soundtrack and are lost in the awe of the moment.
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