Ozus Anti-Cinema

Yoshida starts his award-winning Ozus Anti-Cinema with a story about his trip to Ozus deathbed. Yoshida writes that a dying Ozu whispered to him twice, as if speaking to himself, Cinema is drama, not accident. These cryptic last words troubled Yoshida for decades, and throughout this book he examines Ozus films and tries to uncover what Ozu really meant. Ozus Anti-Cinema concerns Ozus films, but it is also Yoshidas manifesto on films and filmmaking. In other words, this book is Yoshidas personal journey into Ozus thoughts on filmmaking and, simultaneously, into his own thoughts on the nature of cinema. Every page displays the sensibility of one artist discussing anotherthis is probably a book that only a filmmaker could write. Within Yoshidas luminous prose lies a finely tuned, rigorous analysis of Ozus films, which have rarely been engaged as closely and personally as here.