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. Concerned for and affectionate towards his characters, Ozu is mercilessly illusionless. People are creatures of their social and economic and educational backgrounds, but not mechanically or simplisticly so. Emotions are pitch-perfect and lucid -- to the audience, if not always to the characters. Conflicts and passions are tempered by characters' realistic self-perceptions and their practicality, with consequently no implausible hysterics.
Ozu's dramatic best, such as "Floating Weeds" or "Late Spring," compares quite well with the best of Chekhov's plays and stories. In moralizing mode, "Tokyo Story," Ozu descends to melodrama, with good characters being very, very sensitive and altruistic, and bad characters crudely selfish (cf. Chekhov's "The Darling," which is even worse, Tolstoy's idiosyncratic enthusiasm notwithstanding). Although this would be uninteresting in isolation, such types do exist in life, and in the context of Ozu's other movies, it is a worthwhile sample of human variety.
Which brings us to "Ohayo." Reasonably categorized as a comedy, it also resembles Chekhov's comedies, with similar strengths and weaknesses. The movie meanders around a couple plots -- children's conniving to get their parents to buy a television, and a suspected case of embezzling. Though the latter is potentially extremely serious, Ozu follows these conflicts and misunderstandings, and detours into his characters' other doings, with a light, unforced, sometimes quizzical amusement and compassion. This is the great value of the movie, and may, in fact, be its intended point. "Ohayo" is at bottom a comedy and not a deeply serious drama.
Dramas are on human scales: about love, relationships, work, day to day travail and pleasure, and desires to accomplish something in life. Concerned for and affectionate towards his characters, Ozu is mercilessly illusionless. People are creatures of their social and economic and educational backgrounds, but not mechanically or simplisticly so. Emotions are pitch-perfect and lucid -- to the audience, if not always to the characters. Conflicts and passions are tempered by characters' realistic self-perceptions and their practicality, with consequently no implausible hysterics.
Ozu's dramatic best, such as "Floating Weeds" or "Late Spring," compares quite well with the best of Chekhov's plays and stories. In moralizing mode, "Tokyo Story," Ozu descends to melodrama, with good characters being very, very sensitive and altruistic, and bad characters crudely selfish (cf. Chekhov's "The Darling," which is even worse, Tolstoy's idiosyncratic enthusiasm notwithstanding). Although this would be uninteresting in isolation, such types do exist in life, and in the context of Ozu's other movies, it is a worthwhile sample of human variety.
Which brings us to "Ohayo." Reasonably categorized as a comedy, it also resembles Chekhov's comedies, with similar strengths and weaknesses. The movie meanders around a couple plots -- children's conniving to get their parents to buy a television, and a suspected case of embezzling. Though the latter is potentially extremely serious, Ozu follows these conflicts and misunderstandings, and detours into his characters' other doings, with a light, unforced, sometimes quizzical amusement and compassion. This is the great value of the movie, and may, in fact, be its intended point. "Ohayo" is at bottom a comedy and not a deeply serious drama.