"Late Spring"

“Late Spring” directed by Yasujiro Ozu is about a daughter who does not want to marry because she wants to take care of her widowed father. I would use this particular film in my classroom because of its resonating theme of family and marriage and use it to compare to American literature. In my classroom, the students would study the effects of a space that is absent of people. Since a common American theme is regionalism, I would use this film as a springboard to have a discussion about what happens when we fail to acknowledge the history or the context of the place. In the case of this film, it was the rejection of the war, in effect, producing an uncomfortably unnatural world for the viewer.