1 VI 2008
As I roam through the streets of Beijing I once again recall the scenes from Wim Wenders’s tribute to Yasujiro Ozu’s films, especially Tokyo Story. This 1985 documentary came to me as a bonus disc to Ozu’s great yet subtle Late Spring. Though containing an interview with Chishu Ryu, the film is nothing more than the personal encounters of Wenders in his strange-yet-familiar Tokyo in search of the Ozu’s footage. Wenders comments, Ozu’s films are always about Tokyo and always about change–perhaps generational, perhaps societal–hence many of his films open with the train as its symbolic representation for ambivalence towards progress. If Ozu’s attitude towards his Tokyo is one of ambivalence, then Wenders’ must be one of alienation as a stranger. He shoots different scenes: park with exuberant youth, vast network of trains, skyscrapers under construction, traces of the old, and endless rolls of the pachinko palaces. The film traces through these different scenes but cannot find a place for itself, a narrative that powerfully grasps the present condition like Ozu’s great achievements. Indeed, to the eyes of a foreigner familiar with the scene through pre-established constructions (Ozu’s lenses), this changing Tokyo in 1985 is lost, relentlessly pursuing something without knowing its own directions. Even the interview with Ryu, an actor of a bygone era, only serves as a temporary remedy to the situation. In this sense, then, Wenders is seeking something already lost. Though never able to reappear, at least traces of it can be felt in Wenders search for Ozu. The concrete reality of this search lies within the films of Ozu themselves.
I must consider Wenders a fortunate one; at least he has an Ozu to seek, a legacy to inherent. I, facing the changing streets of Beijing, find such inspirations lacking.
