Friday, March 17, 2017
Mono No Aware
Mono no aware is the Japanese idea of the awareness of the transience of beauty and the ultimate sadness of life. After watching Early Summer can you better understand this concept? Where there scenes that evoked both feelings of joy and sadness, moments of beauty and tears? What were your emotions at the end of the film? What did you think about some of the images we discussed in class: the waves, the photograph, the child's balloon? Are there moments when you felt the sadness and the beauty of life?
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This film, as said before, is a perfect example of Mono No Aware. Noriko and her family long await her marriage which finally happens towards the end. After learning of her marriage, I was happy for her and saw no way of it being sad at first. Soon, when I found out the family would never be the same and people were moving away, I understood the sadness with the happiness which is Mono No Aware. The beauty of marriage (and many of things) will always be accompanied by a certain sadness that is unavoidable. The ending for me managed to be happy but sad at the same time. It was part of a very few films which capture both emotions towards the end and I feel a bit of confusion on what to feel. I feel that the idea of the marriage being a happy moment in Noriko’s life but splitting the family shows change may be a happy moment but sad because you are leaving an old life behind that will never be the same. For me it is almost a nostalgic feeling. I take for granted the current situation until I leave it is when I miss it and long for it to return. That is the sad aspect to it. Like the last day of school, it is a happy moment but you know you will never live the experience of that grade ever again and you revel in the experiences you had that will only be a nostalgic feeling in your memory. Or when my sister went off to college, I was happy but sad that I will not be able to see her or have the same experiences. I believe that Early Summer all throughout the film was trying to set us up for the end by making us aware of simple Mono No Aware examples that we see every day. Like the balloon, it is a sign of freedom and childhood happiness but at the same time it is sad because some child recently lost that balloon and is probably crying. Overall the film does a wonderful job of capturing the beauty of change. Change may bring happiness but with that will be sadness.
ReplyDeleteThough, as a class, we discussed Mono no aware, Early Summer helped me understand the idea in a less abstract context. Talking about Mono no aware, I had a basic idea of what it meant, but it was not until after watching Ozu’s film that I could truly understand the idea in real life context. Towards the end of the film, I thought when Noriko announces she will get married her family would be happy and relieved, but they actually were not excited. Part of this is because Noriko’s fiancé is not the man her family would have chosen, but more importantly her decision marks the start of the family’s separation. The scene in which Noriko starts to cry at the table with her family members shows Mono no aware since Noriko is transitioning to married life, supposedly better than the single life, however she will be moving on and moving away from her family. At the end of the film, I felt the excitement for Noriko, but I also felt sad knowing that her sister-in-law would be alone with Noriko’s brother and their parents would live alone. Throughout the film, the house always seemed crowded, the women eating cake in the kitchen, the little boys assembling a train track in the living room, and the men discussing matters at the table, there were plenty of people were milling about. It was almost heartbreaking knowing that their family would never be the same again. As the youngest sibling, I have seen both of my older sisters go off to college. It felt a little bit like Noriko leaving, but when it happened the first time, I didn’t think anything would change drastically in life at home. I was wrong, and definitely now appreciate my time with my parents more before I leave in a few months.
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ReplyDeleteWhat I took from our initial discussion about Mono no aware in class is that I was able to give a definition of it, but that’s basically it. If someone were to ask me to define it, I would be able to give them a good enough response to justify that I had an understanding of what it meant. I could bring up the proper buzzwords to satisfy the definition that it’s a complex feeling of sadness mixed with beauty; but that was the extent of it….. until I saw Early Summer for myself. Finally witnessing the movie allowed me to grasp the complexity of the idea I thought I had understood just because of the fact that I was able to explain it. The first instance in which I noticed myself grasping the idea was during the family photograph, when the family talks about them one day being broken up. It shows the value of life in that the most cherished things can never be eternal, which is why they are sad. At the same time though, they wouldn’t be good in the first place if they weren’t temporary. At the conclusion of the film, my initial instinct was one of more sadness than happiness because of the fact that the family is separating, which is a sacred happiness in my opinion. However, after giving it more thought, I’ve adopted the more mature perspective that comes with the self-realization of Mono no aware, and I am now more content about the fact that the family was able to enjoy something so beautiful for so long, without any travesties such as death getting in the way of what they had. Finally, I saw the meaning of Mono no aware in metaphors such as the waves and the child’s balloon. I find waves to hold a beautiful form as they flow for miles, until they reach their inevitable crashing point. The same goes for the happiness a child finds in holding his balloon. The balloon will eventually die out, whether it’s due to the wind blowing it away or just old age inevitably deflating it.
ReplyDeleteMono no aware is the Japanese idea that has to relate with focusing on the sadness that comes from the fleeting nature of life. Having not known about this idea, and not realizing it in my life, Early Summer has helped me to better understand this fleeting nature. There were not only images in the film to demonstrate this idea, such as a child’s balloon, but the plot itself was an illustration of this idea. During the movie, the grandfather looks up in the sky and sees a balloon floating up in the sky. Instead of marveling at the balloon, he says that somewhere a child is crying. This is our first idea of the mono no aware. There are two sides to this balloon floating in the sky. The first is that the balloon itself is pretty to watch rising. The second is that the reason why that balloon is up in the sky is because a little child has let it slip out of his grip. Everyone as a child has had this happen, and knows how sad this experience can be to a little kid. In retro spec, this balloon floating is quite sad since we know the cause. The plot itself is an example of mono no aware. The story depicts a family, that is being ripped apart because of time, the daughter is moving away, and the son is moving for a job. This is an example of how harsh life is. This is something that happens to every family, it is a real example of something that used to be happy, and now is sad. With this as well as the balloon image, the movie Mono no Aware is able to turn a bland story idea, being just about a families daily life, and turning it into a relatable story about the real sadness of family life.
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