Yasujiro Ozu's Equinox Flower (1958) was his first color film, and on the surface might have marked a significant shift for him; yet, in many ways, the film is remarkably consistent with his body of work. His static, low-level shots frame the actors and the interiors of homes; the narrative is economical and tightly controlled; the encroaching imprint of the West appears in subtle, seemingly cursory signs and conversations; the private dilemmas of families develop in simple, quiet, yet irrevocable ways. In addition to all these staples of his films, Equinox Flower reveals another consistent characteristic of Ozu's artistry: how his work is moving and meaningful in the simplest, gentlest manner, in the flash of a smile, the nod of a head, the turn of a frown, the expressive affirmation of a single "yes", the brief stare into the distance. After a crucial confrontation between Wataru Hirayama (Shin Saburi, pictured above) and his wife, Kiyoko (Kinuyo Tanaka), about their daughter's marriage plans, Ozu lingers on Kiyoko's slightly down-turned face as the complexity and the potential outcomes of her family's trouble manifest in her eyes and the curve of her mouth. In this patriarchal culture, Ozu has afforded the family matriarch the respect and emotional space she deserves and has allowed her to express her true self, to prove that she is hardly the compliant wife she is expected to be.
Ozu's respect for women marks Equinox Flower as the creation of a sympathetic mind. Setsuko (Ineki Arima), the Hirayamas' eldest daughter, wants to break with tradition by finding a husband by herself; her friend, Yukiko (Fujiko Yamamoto), gingerly resists her own mother's pressure to get her to marry an affluent physician. These women are representatives of a younger, more individualistic generation, one yearning to be free of burdensome traditions, and their confrontation with the unbending representative (namely, Wataru) of an old-fashioned generation forms the central drama of this film. Kiyoko, not entirely unsympathetic to her husband's concern about Setsuko's financial future, has the unenviable but vital task of finding the middle ground between parties whose vision of modern life is influenced not only by age but by seemingly irreconcilable values. Ozu presents Kiyoko in neutral colors, has her stand next to the bright red radio that broadcasts music through the Hirayamas' living room. By contrast, Wataru increasingly becomes shrouded by dark browns and grays, particularly after Setsuko returns home from visiting her boyfriend, when Wataru emerges from the cool darkness of an unlit room to confront his daughter. (Equinox Flower is not dramatically different from Ozu's other late work; the new color palette only, though nicely, augmented his methods for conveying his themes of conflict.)
Brilliantly, Ozu uses a form of narrative counterpoint to turn Wataru into one of his greatest of character studies. At the film's opening, Wataru, as a wedding guest, explains his envy for newlyweds who married out of love, not arrangement, while he coarsely recalls the old Japanese traditions that forged his own marriage; yet he cannot bestow the same grace upon his own daughter. To obtain a better understanding of his own family situation, Wataru meets with Fumiko (Yoshiko Kuga), an old friend's daughter who has broken custom by moving in with her boyfriend. While he listens intently, she admits she's happy, despite her lover's lowly and uncertain economic status; later, Yukiko asks Wataru for marital advice, and he tells her to marry whomever she wants. Yet he will not afford Setsuko any of these same considerations (and his attempt to give Fumiko spending money illustrates just how anxious he is about these women's economic futures). Most of all, in a particularly tender moment, Kiyoko reminisces about the family's togetherness during the war, despite their poverty. Wataru counters her memory by expressing his disdain for the experience, and, here, the truth of his character emerges.
He is not, in Ozu's beautifully balanced portrait, despicable; stubborn, to be sure, but not despicable. His adherence to the apparent wisdom of arranged marriages, his nearly monomaniacal focus on the economic stature of his daughter's potential husband, his resistance to Setsuko's desire for individual freedom, are the natural result of having lived through the hardships brought on by the Second World War. His stubbornness, additionally, is the natural response of a man accustomed, for most of his adult life, to supporting his family by working in characterless, uniform, drab-gray offices, by being a member of a society that has emphasized productivity, efficiency, security, and risk-free choices. And by keeping these elements either in the background, or by referring to them tangentially, Ozu never resorts to jejune commentaries on societal conditions, never lets Wataru's past experiences take the onus entirely away from his own personal idiosyncrasies, and, most of all, never entirely condemns Wataru or men with similar old-world concerns.
Instead, after observing how Wataru struggles to accept a younger generation's values and choices, Ozu places him in the center of the film's foremost symbol of transition, namely, a train. Wataru leaves the family's dilemmas behind him, both spatially and emotionally, traveling towards Hiroshima, Japan's own epicenter of change, where his daughter will likely find a new life, and where further transitions will undoubtedly, yet wonderfully, occur.

