Final Blossay: How Should We Live Our Lives?

           Everyone has their own idea of what is important in life.  Steve Jobs’ opinion was, “Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”  I happen to agree with these values but everyone is different and holds certain aspects of life closer to their hearts.  With everyone following different imperatives and having different morals, is there a right and wrong way to live life?  I say no.  I think the way you choose to live your life is part of what makes you, you.  I will look at a few different characters in the films we have watched this semester, including Noriko and Shukichi from Late Spring, Ho, Mark, and Kit from A Better Tomorrow, Sergeant Lee and Sergeant Oh from Joint Security Area, and Cuiqiao from Yellow Earth, to look at what was important to them and how this affected how they led their lives.

            In Late Spring, we watched the lives of Noriko and her father Shukichi, a modern middle class family in Japan.  The main plot of the film consists of determined efforts by a few people in Noriko’s life to get her to get married.  As a cultural and time period matter, women usually had their husbands picked out for them in an arranged marriage.  In the 1940s however, things were only just starting to change to a time when women could start to choose their own husbands.  Noriko seems to be stuck in this metamorphic time where tradition and modern expectations are being integrated.  She is very hesitant in the film to get married, saying that she is content where her life is, at home with her father.  Her aunt and her father however, are of a different generation and seeing Noriko getting older and still not married worries them.  Her father appears to want his daughter to have her own life and is concentrating on her happiness while her aunt seems occupied with the process of match-making. 

Something to notice is that Noriko is never told that she is getting married by her family.  Instead they plead with her and ask her to consider the man they picked out for her.  This is a big change from the traditional match-making and marriage process.  Besides her being content at home, Noriko also worried about what would happen to her father if she went off and got married.  In the end, Noriko likes the man her family has picked out for her and ends up marrying him, only under the impression that her father would also be remarrying.  After the wedding, her father is shown in their home alone, suddenly overcome with loneliness and sadness.  After the film, we realize what is important to Noriko and Shukichi.  It is not cultural norms or expectations that dictate their actions but love, family, and happiness.  Shukichi is looking out for his daughter’s happiness over his own.  Noriko got married not only for herself but because she thought it was what her father would want.

Early in the semester we observed the relationships between Ho, his best friend Mark, and Ho’s brother Kit in A Better Tomorrow.  Ho and Mark are prominent members of the Triad where they are literally partners in crime.  Although Ho has chosen the life of a criminal, he encourages his younger brother Kit, who he is very close with, to join the police force.  When a deal goes wrong, Ho is sent to prison while Mark is crippled in a gun fight and Kit and his father are attacked in an apartment.  Kit and Ho’s father is killed in the attack and reveals to Kit that Ho is does not have the cleanest track record.  When Ho gets out of prison, Kit wants revenge against him for their father’s death, blaming Ho and Mark is significantly lower in the hierarchy of the Triad.  Ho is stuck between his friend and his brother because he wants to become someone his brother can reconcile with but Mark wants Ho’s help in taking revenge on Shing.  In the end, he helps Mark, who is killed in the final fight, and turns himself in, giving himself to Kit so that Kit can take credit for arresting him and closing the case. 

Each of these characters had some intense choices that were made, but they were all made for each other.  Ho changes his life around after prison for his brother.  Kit gives his gun to Ho in the end so that Ho can kill Shing.  Mark turns the escape boat around to save both Ho and Kit and ends up being part of the reason why the brothers reconcile with each other in the end.  Although Mark is not Ho’s actually brother by blood, he is a brother through their friendship.  Kit and Ho realize how important family is in the end and all three men’s self-less acts are evidence that they lead their lives according to what is best for their family because that is what they hold dearest to them.

In Joint Security Area, we followed Major Jang as she tried to solve the case of how two North Korean soldiers were killed in the North Korean border station.  What we come to learn as the plot develops is that the two soldiers from the South Korean border befriended the two North Korean border soldiers through a series of events.  It all began when Sergeant Oh and Private Jeong save Sergeant Lee from a mine.  They get to know each other and eventually, Sergeant Lee brings in Private Nam into the friendship.  When they are caught together one night, all hell breaks loose.  Lee shoots the North Korean officer who discovers them, as well as Private Jeong.  Oh ends up finishing off the officer that walked in on them and lets Lee and Nam escape, coming up with a story that both sides must stick to in the investigation.  In the end, Nam attempts suicide and ends up in a coma and Lee steals a pistol from an officer and commits suicide.  What do we learn about these men from all of this?  I think that their story reveals that friendship means the most to them and they did the best they could to protect each other in a situation that was doomed from the beginning.  Lee commits suicide in the end because he cannot deal with the fact that he killed his friend and that his other friend tried to commit suicide because of something he did.  Oh helps Lee kill an officer and even has an outburst during the investigation when he sees that Lee is about to give himself up.  Nam so determined to protect their friendship jumps out a window to avoid a lie detector test.  For these men, friendship was what was meaningful in their lives and without it, they all fell apart.

In Yellow Earth, Cuiqiao’s life changes when Gu Qing comes to her village.  Gu is a soldier of the Eighth Route Army looking for folk songs to turn into communist songs.  He travels to Shaanxi and stays in Cuiqiao’s home along with her father and her brother Hanhan.  Cuiqiao, like all young girls her age, is expected to enter into an arranged marriage.  At the beginning of the film we see her fearfully watching a wedding procession of a young girl her age and an older man, knowing that she would suffer the same thing.  When Gu introduces Cuiqiao to the new thinking of the Eigth Route Army, such as women being able to join the army, Cuiqiao becomes hopeful and wants to join the army.  However, her father informs her that she will have to be married in order to afford a bride price for Hanhan.  Gu must return to the army and Cuiqiao begs him to take him with her but he tells her that once he gets permission for her to join that he will return for her.  But he doesn’t return fast enough because Cuiqiao gets married.  She decides to go to the army on her own and tries to cross the Yellow River at the time of its strongest current and disappears.  We are led to believe that she drowns in the river.  Unlike the characters form the other films, family is not necessarily what comes first for Cuiqiao.  For her, her personal freedom is what matters most to her, and she ran away trying to attain that.  If family was what mattered most, she would have stayed with her new husband for the sake of her family.  But Cuiqiao lived a hard life that she had no choices in and so it is not a surprise that her freedom was what she decided was most important.  It’s not to say that family was not important because she did go through with the wedding, probably for Hanhan’s sake.  It’s just that freedom was the choice she made for what she wanted for the rest of her life.

I think a lot of factors account for how someone chooses to live their life or what becomes most valuable to them.  The characters from the films are from all different time periods from all different countries.  The most common thread between them is family.  There is probably a good majority of people in this world that would also say that family is the most important thing to them.  Looking at all of these films together has revealed that the love and respect for one’s family is a universal element of how people choose to live their lives, whether it is protecting family or making sacrifices for family.  

The End Is Where We Start From: A Formal Analysis

             Within his collection of essays in Tsurezuregusa, Yoshida Kenko commenting on the lives of cherry blossoms wrote, “In all things, it is the beginnings and the ends that are interesting.”  I can definitely attest to Kenko’s view on the matter and have realized as the semester has progressed, that the beginnings and endings in the films we have seen have affected me the most, whether they have been my favorite or least favorite parts of the film.  I feel that the endings of a film certainly have a huge impact as they will offer one of two things: they will either give you all the answers in how the story ends or it will leave everything up in the air for the audience to decide.  Several factors come into play in the final scenes of a film such as cinematography and sound.  I will analyze and compare the finales of Yasujirō Ozu’s Late Spring, Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, and Kim Ki-duk’s Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring.

           The final scenes of Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring feature a Buddhist monk who throughout the film we have watched live and learn through the different stages of his life.  The scene begins with the monk taking a statue of Buddha Maitreya out of a cabinet and tying the stone wheel the statue is supposed to be perched on, around his waist.  As the monk is tying the rope around the stone, music starts to play in the background.  The track is a traditional song called "Jeongseon Arirang" which features a lot of percussion and woodwind instrumentals and eerily beautiful vocals.  There is no dialogue for the rest of the film, only this underlying soundtrack, which I believe makes the scene all the more powerful.  The song starts off with only the instrumentals and softer vocals as the monk starts his journey with the statue, the stone dragging behind him.  As he approached the wall-less gates to the pond on which he lives, the vocal amplitude suddenly rises very passionately and as he crosses the threshold and then drops once he passes the gates.  I feel like his passing through those gates signifies a leg of his journey completed, and so the music reflects that in its rising and falling.

We know from watching the previous footage in the film that the monk dragging this stone behind him, in his struggle to get up the mountain is symbolic of a few things.  It is a reference to the animals he tortured as a young novice monk by tying a stone to them and watching them struggle to go on their way.  There are even a couple of flashbacks within the scene to these animals in their struggle with the stones.  This scene can also be taken as the monk moving on towards the next stage of his life, this hike being the passage or test to get there.  Like before as a child, he learned through carrying a stone on his own back, so now, he does it again.  As our protagonist makes his way up the mountain, we watch him fall and trip from all different camera angles, both looking down at him and looking up at him, as he bears the weight of the stone behind him.  The raspy and mournful voice belting out the song makes the audience sympathetic to his struggles even more.  When the monk reaches the top, the tempo of the song seems to pick up, as if going along with the monk’s success of reaching his destination.  Once at the top, the monk meditates and the vocals are no longer being belted out as if in struggle, but instead begin to soften and conclude the song.  The ending shot zooms in on the small temple on the frozen lake from a bird’s eye view and stops zooming as the song stops.  

This final sequence is significant because it effectively summarizes the monk’s struggles in life, what he has learned from them, and how he will ultimately overcome them.  The flashbacks to the animals as he climbs the mountain shows the similarity between what he did to them and what he is facing in the final scene.  At the end, he makes it to the top and we get a sense that he has finally been “enlightened” so to speak, and is ready to move forward with his life.  There is no dialogue in the entire finale so the monk’s toil is narrated by a powerful and expressive song that seems to mirror his efforts.

In the final scenes of Late Spring, Shukichi Somiya has just arrived home after seeing his newly-wed daughter off.  The house-keeper is at home waiting to greet him and leaves almost as soon as he arrives, leaving him quite alone.  He has a small smile on his face as he hangs up his coat in the empty house but soon the smile fades as he realizes just how alone he is.  Appearing almost tired, Shukichi meanders to a chair and takes a seat.  All the while, soft music plays in the background.  The soundtrack seems reflective and sad, imitating the feelings being evoked by the sad sight of lonely Shukichi.  He begins to peel an apple with a knife and succeeds in doing so without breaking the peel.  As he is keeping himself busy, the camera zooms in on the apple in his hands slowly rotating as he carefully peels it, and lets the peel just fall to the ground.  Now the camera angle has changed and we are looking at him from the side as he gazes at the apple in his hands.  Shukichi slowly lowers his head into a bow, and I get the impression that he is starting to understand that not having his daughter around will be hard and he might not be able to keep himself busy as easily as he had thought. 

As the song slows down, the scene fades from Shukichi sitting in his home into an ocean scene with rolling waves.  All of a sudden, the music starts to dramatically reel, loudly and crashing, mimicking the movement of the waves.  The sad tune seems to be heightened as the film comes to an end, the scene fading out.  We the audience, are left with all kinds of questions.  Does he regret making his daughter start her own life?  Will he be lonely for the remainder of his?  The story stops there and we can infer for ourselves what happens next, which is a beautiful thing about endings left open.  The camera angle of Shukichi is different from the camera angles of the monk in Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring.  In Late Spring, there is a theme of being at eye level with or lower than Shukichi and being in pretty close proximity to him.  In Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, we are always either looking up at, looking down at, or are looking from afar at the monk.  There is only one part where we are close to eye level with the monk and this is when he is meditating on the mountain top.  The soundtrack for this final scene is very different from the soundtrack of Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring.  In Late Spring’s last song, it is a soft, conservative, string instrumental that picks up at the very end.  Perhaps the music starts out gentle to reflect Shukichi’s gloomy mood and then becomes roaring to match the waves and signify the end or give the audience hope that the ending can be a happy one.  In Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, the soundtrack reflects the monk’s journey and hard-ship as well as the culture.  They are similar in that both songs mirror the characters in the closing scenes.

The end of Ikiru proves to be something pretty unexpected.  In the film, we know that our main character, Kanji Watanabe, has cancer and so is in search for meaning in his life while he still can, as his death rapidly approaches.  What is unexpected is that he dies well before the end of the film.  Though this is strange for a film, it is actually very realistic because everybody dies and death does not wait until you are ready; it just happens when it does.  So since Watanabe dies before his story is over, the end consists of flashbacks of the people attending his wake.  In the flashback of the police that found Watanabe in the park, we see Watanabe sitting alone at night on a swing in the park that he made possible.  It is snowing and the only sound you hear is Watanabe’s deep, throaty voice singing "Gondola no Uta."  The first time he sings this song in the film it is very sad and affects everyone around him.  This time in the park, he seems at peace with what he has achieved with the park and his life.  I think the song still makes us sympathetic to Watanabe’s situation but it is in a more content way the second time around.  When we see him on the swing, the first few lines of the song we see him from the side through a jungle gym, making a very interesting perspective.  As the song progresses, the angle is of Watanabe from the front and the scene fades into the picture of Watanabe’s face that is on display at the wake.  I think the fading of the scene really reflects the softness and solemn emotion of the scene.

 In the very final scene of Ikiru, we see Watanabe’s co-worker looking down from a bridge at Watanabe’s playground.  The camera angle starts out by looking at the side of the co-worker’s face and then the shot slowly moves toward the playground in an almost spiral effect, and then cuts to being at ground-level with the playground.  On the playground we see children playing and two boys are called off the swings to go eat dinner.  They jump off their swings, which stay in motion once they are gone and the camera lingers on this for a moment.  Slowly the camera pans upward to see the silhouette of the co-worker looking down from the bridge.  The music is already playing at this point and it is non-other than Watanabe’s anthem: "Gondola no Uta."  No one sings the tune this time; it is only a lone flute playing the melody.  The co-worker slowly walks away on the bridge and the camera follows him until he walks off-screen.  All of a sudden the music roars as the scene fades out to black.  This song ending the film is very similar to that of “Late Spring,” in that a soft song suddenly ends in a big way.  Perhaps in the case of Ikiru, the song ends this way for a hopeful purpose, like Late Spring’s, except for this film, the hope is for the workers in the office to muster some courage for their conviction to do better in honor of Watanabe.  The camera angle is similar to that of Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring because first we are looking down at the playground, and then looking up at the co-worker. 

 The endings of these three films have a few things in common, whether it is the soundtrack or a similar theme of camera angles. But they are all very different stories and end way they do for a reason.  And to no surprise, each of the films left me with different feelings at the end.  For Late Spring, I felt sympathy for Shukichi.  For Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, I felt a sense of triumph.  For Ikiru, I felt reflective and solemn.  I think that without the elements specific to these films that I have discussed, I might not have felt the same way.