오즈 야스지로 영화의 비판적 근대 사회 재현 - <만춘>과 <맥추>를 중심으로

Abstract

This study attempts to argue that Ozu Yasujiro's film critically represents modern society. Ozu Yasujiro exposes the contradictions and pain of modern society through various directing methods, even when he doesn't reveal his view on modern society directly in the narrative. To effectively argue this, this study examines the directing of expressing modern time and the negative characteristics of modern people, with <Late Spring> and <Early Summer> as the main targets of analysis. Ozu Yasujiro's film uses watches and trains to reflect on modern time. The use of clock sounds penetrating from the workplace to the home represents a segmental time order that controls all human behavior to maximize efficiency. The way the train is directed visualizes the characteristics of modern time that are teleological and irreversible. The characters that move according to the sound or the angle of the clock or the characters that appear with the image of the train depict modern people who internalized the rhythm of the modern life, which is uniformly fixed. Furthermore, it is appropriate to analyze the actor's acting, eyeline between characters, and arrangement of objects and characters using the concept of “automaton conformity” devised by Erich Fromm to explain the pathological personality structure of modern people. Emotion-suppressing expressions, unnatural gestures, and synchronized acting between characters show automaton conformity of modern people, which countervails anxiety by controlling emotions and thoughts and acting similar to others. The incongruent eyeline between the characters reveals modern isolated human relationships based on competition and indifference. In addition, the arrangement of characters trapped in multiple frames or controlled by surrounding elements represents the illusion of the freedom and individual subjects advocated by modernization. Ozu Yasujiro's film reveals the characteristics of modern times while also showing subversive directing that reject the modern system of thinking. Representative examples are the non-human gaze that places a distance between the audience and the movie, and the directing that shows a nonlinear time in which the past, present, and future are mixed. At the current point of time when modern contradictions remain, it is hoped that this study will provide an opportunity to effectively review the meaning of Ozu Yasujiro's works.