The city
This is a movie that boils down to family and the relationships that are formed between the members of the same family. This feels, at every step of the way, a homage to Ozu and the way he was able to portray the intergenerational struggles of what could be called modern Japan. Kogonada tries to portray the intergenerational struggles in an even more modern United States.
The viewer is presented with so many clues to understand that this is a small town. The calmness of the characters, the slow pace in which everything develops. The viewer is then forced to slow down, if they are not used to living like that (like myself).
Small conversations that go nowhere or have any purpose between two small-towners and the “big” conversations that the people who already left the small-town mindset try to push onto the ones that are willing to just exist and live.
But what matters is the inbetween: the two characters that are neither the ones with the small-town mindset nor the ones without it. The ones that are willing to have a conversation and get to know the other without trying to push them to be like them. They get to grow next to each other: one does not care about all the facts that the other has memorised about the architecture of the town; nor does the other care about the ideas the one has about moving out of town since this is where they live.
When I first read the name of the movie, I thought that this movie was about Columbus, Ohio, and that goes to show that I am biased towards big cities and emancipation stories, but I am so glad that this was instead about Columbus, Indiana, because it goes to show the nature of moving out of a place like this when all you have ever known is precisely that.
The most heavily charged line of this film is one that is said so frequently, that it might lose its meaning, but it really captures how this juncture in time between two seemingly disjoint characters are able to support each other to simply become what they have to become.
The other cities
Kogonada portrays this small town in a sublime fashion, and, again, in so many ways it pays homage to Ozu, when the shots make the viewer wonder if they are not observing a painting, but this idea is dismissed as soon as we see people walk, people talk, people just exist in the back. Several of the most memorable shots seem precisely a lost memory that one might have had and forgot but was timely brought back to memory.
If Ozu is able to show that the newer generation is capable of hurting, albeit unintentionally, the older one, Kogonada tries to show that the newer generation is also grieving and that process is inevitable. Any decision that either of them takes will have a toll on the other one and maybe that is the poetic nature of the fact that we are a separate generation from our parents.
Maybe this is unlike Taipei Story (1985), in which the city itself is being transformed, and with it, its inhabitants do so too. But in Columbus, Indiana, the city is not changing, the city will remain the way it is and its (young) inhabitants have to ask themselves if they want to change and leave or stay and be what they are supposed to be.
And it may be also unlike Tokyo Story (1953) since the main characters are the old parents, the Hirayamas that are only wanting to be with their children even if it is for a brief period of time. But for Casey, she wants to spend time with her mom but it seems like her mom at times does not.
Maybe it is unlike any other city, since this is Columbus, Indiana and not another city, or unlike any other film, but it certainly feels like all these cities and films paved the way so Kogonada can bring a heartfelt story into fruition. He is able to do so with elegance and a softness that is hardly ever found anymore.