Analysis Of The Film 'Harmonium'

In Harmonium, the psychological nature of this film vicariously lets the audience undergo a series of plot twists and mood shifts in this family drama. Directed by Kôji Fukada, Harmonium entails the progression of a loving family and their encounter with a mysterious stranger as their lives take a turn for the worse. To begin, the film introduces Toshio, an uninterested machine shop owner, and Akie, Toshio’s overprotective yet dutiful wife, living their daily routines while also taking care of their daughter Hotaru, a young and lively child who is a novice harmonium player. One day, a man named Yasaka, an ex-convict and old acquaintance of Toshio, arrives a Toshio’s residence after being released from prison looking for work and a place to

To explain, Harmonium is depicted as both a family drama and revenge due to the nature of events that happened. To name a few, there was the incident of Yasaka and Akie’s secret relationship, Yasaka’s attack towards Hotaru, and the family’s plot of revenge towards Yasaka. In relation to the films from our class that reminded me of Harmonium, definitely both of the Ozu films I believe represented this. An explanation as to why is because even though the content of the films was quite diverse from another, both Late Spring and I was born but had the overlapping theme of family drama with different aspects pertaining to it. For I was born but, it was the conflict of children being upset over their father’s reputation while Late Spring dealt with a close father-daughter relationship and marriage interfering with it. In Harmonium, we saw a demonstration of a stable family evolving into an unstable one due to the outsider’s actions causing this alteration. To analyze the techniques and style, Harmonium featured long shots of the linen drying on the roof, the playground, and the harmonium. Concluding this point, long shots are a staple to Ozu’s technique of