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.