The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice

David Sims4.5

I was really worried about these two until they finally poured that green tea over the rice

reibureibu4.5

(Re)finding love in the simple pleasures of life. What has been will always have happened but it doesn't define what will be. Understanding. A surprisingly light Ozu that may surprisingly be a favorite just in how honest it is to lived experience and how optimistic it is to continual healing, something he's certainly known for at large but here is it especially an ode to compassion. Loving each other during calm waters is easy, natural even, but it is in those moments of seeing each other during the tempest that are hard and, as such, dear.The best time to have started change has passed. The second best is now.

Kenji Fujishima4.5

"It's enough. I'm glad you understand." So says Mokichi (Shin Saburi) to his wife Taeko (Michiyo Kogure) towards the end of The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice—and that line right there not only summarizes Yasujiro Ozu's view of marriage as contingent on compromise and empathy, but also succinctly sums up the great Japanese filmmaker's complex, unsparing yet wise humanist perspective as a whole. Just when you think Ozu, after putting the Satakes' troubled arranged marriage under an alternately comic and dramatic microscope for about an hour and a half, is about to succumb to bitterness and cynicism, he surprises us with a scene overflowing with tenderness and love. Without acceptance lies loneliness. Whether the initial passion was there or not, "reliability" is what inevitably keeps a marriage going. Someday the young ones will learn.