Playing the Holes

Across his entire career, from the early nansensu films to the late family dramas, Ozu consistently used gags and humor to alleviate the tension of dramatic situations, further enriching their significance. This chapter explores how such Ozuesque gags combine irony and nostalgia in order to balance the overall tone of the narrative, relying on formal strategies such as modularity and repetition. By discussing Wayne C. Booth’s concept of stable irony and other critical sources, the chapter argues that Ozu’s aging (not just running) gags are capable of bringing characters and audiences together because they counterbalance the difficulties of everyday family life and the weight of time. In an attempt to grant a wider comparative analysis, the chapter studies his own gags as well as their influence on contemporary filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismäki, who readapt Ozu’s mixture of playfulness and solitude in their explorations of the contemporary world.