Bordwell on "Room 237"

David Bordwell understands and appreciates what the multilayered and multifaceted Room 237 is trying to do with regard to how it approaches the diaspora of cinematic interpretation out in the world:

If at least some movies need interpreting, The Shining would seem to be a prime candidate. The film creates many questions about the reality of what we see and hear, and it seems to point toward regions larger than its central tale of terror. The director was one of the most ambitious filmmakers of the twentieth century, a film artist who could use a genre-based project like the famously puzzling 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) to convey ideas about the place of human history in the cosmos. Why couldn’t he do the same thing with a Stephen King horror novel?

Donald Richie: 1924-2013

Donald Richie is the reason that Westerners know directors like Ozu and Kurosawa in the manner that we do. He passed away in Tokyo today. The New York Times piece is also worth a look.

He recorded the lion's share of the truly great commentaries on Japanese movies, including one I listened to recently for A Story of Floating Weeds, a true masterpiece that is often overshadowed by its color sound remake. His book OZU is, for many, the starting point for Western analysis of Japanese cinema.

I cite David Bordwell's Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema as my primary source text for Discovering Ozu, but I would not be writing the series without Richie's work, which is repeatedly cited by Bordwell throughout Poetics. Discovering Ozu is designed to be an evolving, dynamic series, which will be (and already has been) updated over time.

My friend Ryan (of CriterionCast) very generously sent me a copy of Richie's book a while back, an act of generosity that was a direct motivator for overhauling and re-working what was Cinema Ozu (now deprecated) into Discovering Ozu.

I had no delusions of ever getting to talk to Richie, let alone interview him, since I've been aware he was ailing for some time now. Like Ozu, I know his work from a distance. I may delve further into it. He lived a very interesting life. From first experiencing Japan in the army during post-WWII 1947, be went on to become the leading Western authority on Japanese culture by way of cinema.

I had already planned an appendix article on Richie some time soon, but now...I need to spend more time on it.

The photo of Ozu featured on the cover of Richie's OZU

Akira Kurosawa in the classic, director-pointing-a-camera pose