Ohayo - Another from the movie list

Ohayo translates to Good Morning, and it makes sense as a title after seeing the movie.

The story of the film is that of two brothers in a Japanese suburb, and their parents and neighbors all add to the story. The director, Yasujiro Ozu, is well-renowned and allows plenty of time for the setting and characters to develop. The boys head off to school with their friends, often practicing the farting they've learned to excel at by eating pumice. Their fathers head off to work or in search of work, while their mothers gossip about one another. There are a pair of scandalous neighbors who sit around in their robes all day, and the mothers are unhappy with the fact that, as this ccouple is the only family around with a television set, their boys lie and hang out with the robe-neighbors after school every day to watch sumo wrestling and baseball.

The stage is set, and now the main characters, the brothers, argue with their parents over dinner one night about wanting a television. After their father has had enough, he tells them to stop talking and the brothers vow not to talk for one hundred days unless they get a television.

This causes a stir in the suburb and elsewhere. The neighbor mothers speculate about the brothers' mother, the teachers cannot figure out what is wrong with the boys, and their aunt is troubled that they will not speak to her, either.

Ohayo is an example of how complex a simple story can be, and it raises interesting themes with regard to small talk and consumerism.