Ohayô

Plot synopsis:
The film takes place in suburban Tokyo, and begins with a group of boy students going home.
The film steers into a subplot concerning the local women's club monthly dues. Everyone in the neighborhood club believes that Mrs Hayashi, the treasurer, has given the dues to the chairwoman, Mrs Haraguchi (Haruko Sugimura), but Mrs Haraguchi denies it. They gossip amongst themselves who could have taken the money, and speculate that Mrs Haraguchi could have used the money to buy for herself a new washing machine. Later Mrs Haraguchi confronts Mrs Hayashi for starting the rumor and ruining her reputation, but Mrs Hayashi states that she has indeed handed the dues money to Haraguchi's mother. Only later does Mrs Haraguchi realize it was her mistake (her mother being quite senile and forgetful), and she goes to apologize.
The boys are all attracted to a neighbor's house because they have a television set, where they can watch their favorite sumo wrestling matches. (At the time of the film's release in Japan, the medium was rapidly gaining popularity.) However, their conservative parents forbid them to visit their bohemian neighbors because the wife is thought to be a cabaret singer.
As a result of this, the young boys of the Hayashi family, Minoru and Isamu, pressure their mother to buy them a television set, but their mother refuses. When their father (Chishū Ryū) comes to know about it, he asks the boys to keep quiet when they kick a tantrum. Minoru throws an anger fit, and states that adults always engage in pointless niceties like "good morning" and refuse to say exactly what they mean. Back in their room, Minoru and Isamu decide on a silence strike against all adults. The first neighbor to bear the brunt of this snub is Mrs Haraguchi.
Mrs Haraguchi, angered by this snub, speculates it is Mrs Hayashi who instigates this in revenge over their earlier misunderstanding, and tells this to busybody Mrs. Tomizawa (Teruko Nagaoka). Soon, everybody thinks Mrs Hayashi is a petty, vengeful person, and are all queueing up to return their loaned items to her.
Minoru and Isamu continue their strike in school, and even against their English tutor. Finally, their schoolteacher visits to find the root of their silence. The two boys run off from home with a pot of rice due to hunger, but are caught by a passing policeman. They disappear for hours into the evening, until their English tutor finds them outside a station watching television.
At the end of the film, the boys find out their parents have indeed purchased a television set to support a neighbour in his new job as a salesman. Jubilant, they stop their strike at once. Their English tutor and their aunt appear to be starting a fresh romance.

Tags: romantic, humor, satire

Review:
For viewers who have seen only one or two of Ozu's statelier films -- say, "Tokyo Story" or "Equinox Flower" -- "Good Morning" will be a surprise.
The family's authority structure is upended, with the all-powerful father crumbling against the stubborn silence of two little boys.What wins in the end is love -- or rather (Ozu must have found this particularly funny) love and television.
There may be greater Ozu films, but it's hard to think of one I actually like more than "Good Morning.".
"Good Morning," is one of my favorite's films.It means a lot to me personally, because -like all of Ozu's work- it demonstrates a brilliant understanding of the complexities of being human.
Ultimately though, it is the humour which makes "Good Morning" my favorite's Ozu picture, for it is a very funny movie.
I can hardly imagine an open-minded person not enjoying it.Because many North American viewers have a reluctance to watch films more than a few years old, or in languages other than English, Ozu's exposure here is still extremely limited.
Ozu said he wanted to make a film about people's inability to express the important things, but natter on about unimportant gossip.
If the material remains generally lightweight when compared to some of his other movies, it still has the same thoughtful, low-key touch and genuinely human characters.The young boys drive much of the story in this one, and they are very believable, whether in their petulant responses to parental authority or in their schoolboy fads.
The grandmother character and the aunt of the two brothers are probably the most interesting of the characters, yet all of them have a purpose.As is usually the case with Ozu's movies, you can watch it a second time and see additional detail in the characters' relationships and dialogue.
In a small community of workers in Japan, two brothers decide to not speak because they want to force their parents to buy a television.With this single storyline, Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu exposes a delightful and critical view of the behavior of the Japanese working class under the American influence in the post-WWII.
The situation of the retired people is magnificently pictured through the desperate men looking for a job; the domination of the USA in Japan is represented through the need of private English classes for the two brothers, and the translation of documents to English; superfluous consume of the American society is represented through the importance of the useless television for the younger generation, while their parents are concerned with have some savings for their retirement.
It may have the skimpiest of plots--two young brothers take a vow of silence until their parents buy them a television--but Yasujiro Ozu's 1959 picture is anything but slight, taking on the subject of language (ironic, considering the story) with attentiveness and intelligence.
In his deliberate, contemplative manner, Ozu presents a wry commentary on the ways even the most innocuous words can harm (gossip) or become the building blocks of a relationship (a budding romance is confirmed by a conversation about the weather); he also notes Japan's growing fascination with the English language (the older boy studies it) and the increasing obsession, now with fourteen years of distance from the war, with American technology--the suburban landscape is peppered with aerial antennas as television begins to permeate the culture.
It's subtly beautiful: each shot is perfectly framed (the camera never moves) with an excellent use of depth that highlights exactly what the director wants you to see and giving you plenty of space to focus; it's easy to see how a master of today's Asian cinema such as Wong Kar-Wai would be profoundly influenced by Ozu's languid yet carefully observed filmmaking.
"Good Morning" (Japanese, 1959): Directed by Ozu. As in all of his films, Tokyo is the stage, and he populates them with his usual team of actors.
Unlike the quiet, black and white drama "Tokyo Story", this later film (in color) is a gentle comedy about how people build the character of each and every day with the smallest of gestures  which is this case is brought to our attention by two small brothers who decide to go "on strike" insisting that their Father get a television for the household.
Last year NHK (national broadcaster in Japan) were playing 2 Ozu movies a night and I tuned into this by accident.Maybe because I have lived in Japan for 10 years and was watching it in it's native language and could understand the subtle nuances in the day-to-day conversation, or maybe simply because I related to the children, having grown up in a household where getting things that you actually want was very rare - quite simply, this movie moved me tremendously, the final scene brought tears to my eyes just *remembering* it a week later.This movie is probably most effective for anybody who grew up in a poor household with parents who tried their best against all odds to keep their children happy..
This family drama is also a witty comedy dealing with the miscommunications that complicate modern life.This was Ozu's second color film (after Equinox Flower), but the cheerful music and bright colors make for different effects.
GOOD MORNING'S "gas" jokes are gentle and clever (the young boys fart on command, a minor character works for the gas company, while a husband farts in one room, and a wife answers, etc.) The film's famous static shots center around a gleaming refinery.
Especially in the absence of many lively or engrossing movies from Chekhov's works -- "An Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano" and "Country Life" are exceptions -- Yasujiro Ozu strikes me as an excellent representative of many of Chekhov's sensibilities.Dramas are on human scales: about love, relationships, work, day to day travail and pleasure, and desires to accomplish something in life.
One of Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu's latter movies (and among his few color films).
In a Japanese suburb in the late 1950s, two Japanese tykes (one about 10 years old, the other about 6) decide not to talk to anybody any more until their parents buy them a television set (this film was made in an era where many people in Japan were buying their first TVs).Shot in his traditional transcendental style, this charming comedy shows a more modern Japan than in other Ozu films of that era (at the same time, the cultural attitudes the movie reflects make it very much a film of the fifties).
In many ways, Good Morning is a movie about the many changes brought by the modernization and Americanization of Japanese society after World War II, Surprisingly for an Ozu film, this has even a number of gags involving human flatulence.A triumph for Ozu, even if it is probably not as moving as Tokyo Story, Late Spring or Early Summer.
Good Morning, or Ohayo (to give the film its native title) centres around two young brothers, Minoru (Koji Shitara) and Isamu (Masahiko Shimazu), who long to own a television set.
In a key sub-plot, the town gossips accuse the neighbourhood treasurer Mrs. Haraguchi (Haruko Sugimura) of embezzling their funds in order to buy herself a new washing machine, when in fact one of the gossips' mothers had forgot to pass the money on.Ozu's reputation as one of cinema's all-time greats and a director of elegance and sophistication is given a bit of a kick up the arse in this film.
Yes, fart jokes, from Ozu. The brothers and their friends have a strange obsession with forcing out little farts as they push each others foreheads, which causes one unfortunate to repeatedly soil himself as he tries to take part.The kids' accusations that grown-ups have nothing useful to say is as amusing as it is poignant.
Though it is somewhat different from other Ozu films that it is centered around kids rather than the parents and it is a light comedy film rather than a dramatic one, it is still as marvelous as Ozu's Tokyo Story.Though I have seen movies by other great directors that handle kids really well, Vittoria Di Sica and Satyajit Ray come to mind, they did in a more dramatic fashion.
This film is about the two boys wanting a television and their parents refusing.
The plot is simplicity itself; two young brothers stop speaking as a protest against their parents not buying a television set, leading to all kinds of complications with their grown-up neighbours.
I'll start off saying something about Good Morning that will sound like I'm putting it down, but I'm really not: the ingredients of the story (or stories if you want to get technical, there are sort of three running plot-lines here with characters all centered around several houses right below one of Ozu's quintessential small hills), in a lot of other's less imaginative or more hackneyed sensibilities, could have made for a sitcom.
That's the way I always come to Ozu's films, where it starts off and for at least the first twenty minutes to nearly half an hour, it feels like "nothing" is happening, but that's only because of expectations that come from seeing decades of movies where incident is supposed to happen, drama is supposed to escalate quickly, and those pesky lessons from screen writing classes get jammed down our throats.
Good Morning doesn't do that; this is the kind of story where what would seem to be a moment of high dramatic conflict comes when the door-to-door salesman, hocking his wares of rubber bands and pencils (yes, *pencils*), drops by and makes the mother of the two boys a little uncomfortable, saying "We don't need anything." As it turns out, he's probably one of the nicest salesmen in the history of cinema.But I hope you can see what I mean if you watch this, or even read the synopsis, how the stuff of this story could have been used as parts for a sitcom type of scenario (Leave it to Beaver, mayhap?) While it should go without saying that the idea of, you know, buying a television being the central conflict and driving force of the two boys who decide to stage a hunger-and-or-"talking" strike (farts are okay though) may appear dated in a world where if one finds a home that does *not* have a TV (or a decent laptop or home projection system or who knows what else), the idea of encroaching technology is something that is universal.
The distraction is part of it, maybe the key part for the mother (when will those pesky kids do their English homework?!), but it's also something a little deeper than that.Ozu's mastery here is to take parts that, again I must stress, seem not only like nothing extraordinary but precisely the stuff that families deal with day in and day out - down to one of those "life's little observation" things a stand-up like Seinfeld might point out, as in why people use those "good morning" "nice weather" observations as a way of masking how one really feels, say, to the woman that's a crush - but gives it a depth of feeling and subtlety that you grow to appreciate.
Like with Tokyo Story, and a few others by this director, it suddenly hits you about half an hour in what Ozu is really trying to do here (for me it's when the kids throw their tantrum and decide to go on their speaking-strike, but, again, the farts are okay), and it becomes a richer experience, one that has a uniqueness despite seeming on the surface to be the stuff that people deal with day in and day out.That the movie is also funny is a plus, but it's not like a 'LOL' sort of scenario, you're not going to bust a gut exactly through this (though I found some hearty laughs with the kid, the son of that actress who is in a lot of Ozu movies as the bitchiest of the characters, I believe the more ungrateful daughter on Tokyo Story actually).
It's such a realistically drawn film, even down to (yes, I must stress again) the fart jokes, that it may be lost on some, like those who would be fine with a typical sitcom for families, that there is commentary about how we live and adapt to changes, and the resistance is just as natural as the gradual acceptance of the change and how we use language (which I used to watch, a lot, I'm not kidding, this feels like something that could've been on Full House!).
It was undoubtedly a marvelous experience, and one that I'll never forget.I think the essential beauty of it lies precisely in its simplicity; unlike some directors, like Bergman or Tarkovsky, masters of visual and intellectual complexity on screen, making the canvas burst with extraordinary imagery, Ozu, on the other hand, finds that beauty and complexity in the utmost ordinary things: wanting a television (at a time when it was gaining mainstream popularity in Japan), eating rice with your brother, watching sumo wrestling, doing some English assignments and even...
Yasujiro Ozu's "Good Morning" is very lightweight, but is much more intelligent than most comedies of its type.It contains a fair amount of commentary on problems involving human communication in more ways than one.
The two brothers' petty vow of silence (in reaction to their parents not buying them a TV set) does just that as well.In the end, it's not a classic, it's not all that original (Ozu presented many of these same themes in his previous films), but it certainly is worth watching.8 out of 10..
I agree with a former submitter here, it is the, "skimpiest of plots" with "two young brothers taking a vow of silence until their parents buy them a television." Yet - it is mainly the subject of language, attentiveness, and intelligence.
Over the past several months, I've evolved into a full-blown devotee of the Japanese film director Yasujiro Ozu. Just when I was tiring of the phoniness, violence and excess of contemporary American movies, I discovered Ozu's quiet (but by no means boring) films and was deeply impressed by his insights into human emotion, family relationships and society.But while Ozu films like Late Spring and Tokyo Story are clearly masterpieces, Good Morning is not his usual fare.
Unlike Ozu's weightier dramas, this film focuses a lot on seemingly trivial matters like suburban gossip and, believe it or not, schoolboy farting competitions.
You see, while Good Morning appears to be a light comedy on the surface, it actually has a lot of perceptive things to say about materialism, envy and the unfortunate superficiality of most human communication.
As a viewer, I could both chuckle immaturely at the fart jokes and appreciate the film's deeper social commentary at the same time.
I often find Ozu's movies so quiet and boring, full of not very interesting lives of middle-class Japanese, whose social life is merely reduced to their homes, where they just find a not very exciting life and where there is no place for rebel souls.
I must say that the film keep the usual Ozu's vision about Japanese family, which seems to be the warmest, safest, happiest social environment, a place where never happens anything wrong.
A side-plot has two little boys enter a pact of silence in protest that their parents are "too cheap" to buy a TV set, so they need not watch Wrestling and Baseball at their neighbors house.
The film focuses on the relationship between generations, and seems to say that we need to respect our elders (as the absent-minded grandma points out, does her now-adult daughter think she raised herself?), but at the same time, tolerate our youngsters (as there is some serious defiance and misbehavior by a couple of boys who want their parents to buy them a television).
Two boys begin a silence strike to press their parents into buying them a television set.Despite Ozu's reputation in the West as an austere and refined director, "Good Morning" does not shy away from depicting many of the neighborhood boys' flatulence jokes!
This film is typical of the films of the Japanese director, Ozu, because it has to do with the conflict between traditions and modern life in this country.
It's slow and gentle--just like all of Ozu's films but with a sense of satire that makes some points about the hazards of post-war life.
In this film Ozu revisits again themes involving kids, but this time in a way more notorious modern Japan and the changes it has brought in society.It all starts as a usual day; the members of a family prepare themselves to confront their problems, dreams and realities.
The main characters (the kids), which are obsessed with having a television (back then it was an innovative device), agree to remain silent until their parents indulge their caprice.One aspect that I liked in this film was the misinterpretation of the kids' silence by one of the neighbors; the woman, who lives in the community, thought their gesture meant their mother was angry at her and other neighbors for having had the idea of her keeping the rent payments for herself.
In fact, his 1959 social comedy of manners, Good Morning (Ohayo), set in a modern Tokyo suburban subdivision, is in many ways far more relevant than the more famed period pieces the other directors made, for it has a definite Western sensibility.
It was also his third color film, and on the surface it would seem to narratively square very easily with the 1950s era American television comedies, as the central story of the film revolves around two brothers' silent protest over their clan's refusal to modernize and buy a TV like their friend's family has.
Director Yasujiro Ozu proves he can bore the viewer equally well when using color film to present mostly recycled trivia.