Good Morning

In suburban Tokyo two brothers stop speaking until their parents buy a television. The silent protest produces misunderstandings first at home and then through the whole neighbourhood, with Mrs Haraguchi next door catching the worst of it. The boys only start talking again when their parents buy the set, to support a neighbour trying to make a sale. Yasujiro Ozu directed. It opened on 12 May 1959 and is his second colour film. It is also a colour remake of his own 1932 silent, I Was Born, But... There is a side of it at odds with his image as an austere filmmaker: the film is full of farting and wetting jokes, and the children run a whole game built on them. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 94 percent. Richard Brody found in it a bitterly ironic, scathingly radical rejection of Japanese codes of self-restraint and silence. Jonathan Rosenbaum called it perhaps the most delightful of Ozu's late comedies. In 2009 it placed 36th on Kinema Junpo's list of the greatest Japanese films. The BFI released it in 2011 and Criterion issued a 4K restoration in 2017. Who it is for: viewers who want to meet Ozu through his humour rather than his heavy dramas. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a dense story. The film is built on everyday neighbourhood talk and goes almost nowhere.