How Cinema Captured Spring’s Transformative Nature
If you ever thought January was an odd choice as the first month of the year, you may not be the only one. In ancient Rome, prior to the introduction of the Julian calendar, the beginning of the year fell during what we now call March. This choice made plenty of sense, as this month coincides with the beginning of Spring when flora and fauna wake up from their winter slumber and the crop cycles start.
This time of the year has long been associated with youth, change, rebirth, and new beginnings. The visual richness of springtime has made it a beloved subject in fine arts. However, not so much in cinema, especially when compared to summer, despite Spring having many conceptual associations.
Some directors working with different genres have harnessed the symbolism and aesthetic of springtime to explore the themes and ideas historically connected with this season. It is the renewal and transformation that reminds us of the cyclical and ephemeral nature of life.
A Tale of Springtime, Conte de Printemps (1990)
This is the first installment of French New Wave director Éric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons (Contes des quatre saisons) series. This dialogue-heavy comedy centers on several of the themes associated with Spring. Set in Paris and the French countryside during springtime, it follows two women, Natacha and Jeanne, throughout the interpersonal ramifications that their budding friendship brings into their lives.
Similarly to other Rohmer films, A Tale of Springtime shows the characters at a transitional time as they gain better understanding of themselves, others, and human nature. The result is a philosophical yet sympathetic analysis of the cyclical aspect of our behaviors and the change that only human connections can bring about. All captured through visuals serenely and meticulously curated.
Emma. (2020)
American director Autumn de Wilde’s first feature film Emma. is an adaptation of the 1815 homonymous novel by British author Jane Austen. Much like the novel, the film centers around Emma Woodhouse, a Regency-era young woman, and her sometimes selfish and strangely well-intentioned shenanigans. All served with a heaping side of Austenian social satire and the odd slapstick moments.
Despite being set across various seasons, as shown by the film’s visually delightful season cards, this period drama is unmistakably springy, thematically and visually. It explores the themes of youth and change through a pastel, intricate aesthetic. Mainly delivered thanks to the work of Oscar-winning costume designer Alexandra Byrne and cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt with many nods to both West Anderson and Sofia Coppola’s work.
Howl’s Moving Castle, ハウルの動く城 (2004)
Loosely based on the Diana Wynne Jones novel with the same name, this animated film by Studio Ghibli’s co-founder Hayao Miyazaki contains many of the themes that have come to define the filmmaker’s work. Explored through the personal journey of its protagonist, a cursed young milliner named Sophie and the characters she meets along her way.
Set in a European-esque warring nation, Howl’s Moving Castle is a staunchly anti-war film, an ode to compassion, a critique of our use of technology, and disconnection from nature. The story is highly character-driven; seeing the heroine change and grow, finding confidence, love, and acceptance. The beautifully animated flower-filled nature scenes bring the plot forward and together to form an uncanny, optimistic, genre-bending tour-de-force.
Marie Antoinette (2006)
After The Virgin Suicides (1999) and the award-winning Lost in Translation (2003), director Sofia Coppola went back to the themes of her debut feature film with Marie Antoinette (2006): female youth, gossip, and isolation. Visually, this biopic of the late French queen is a moving Rococo painting – a lavish, glittering, pastels-bathed portrait of aristocratic life during the Ancien régime.
In classic Sofia Coppola fashion, the thoughtfully curated aesthetic is more than just a stylistic choice but a medium through which she explores a changing, complex self. The Spring-like, confectionary visuals in the film’s countless scenes of decadent overconsumption and “rural” getaways are building blocks. This layered portrait of a woman relies on the cusp between adolescence and adulthood, as well as victim and beneficiary of the political system of 18th century France.
Late Spring, 晩春 (1949)
Yasujirō Ozu’s black-and-white drama Late Spring is one of the Japanese director’s more poignant films. Set in Post-war Japan, this movie, like many Ozu’s sizable oeuvre films, is a family-centered shomin-geki belonging to the film genre that portrays the lives of ordinary Japanese people. The family in question is composed of a father and daughter (Shukichi Somiya and Noriko), which we follow through a time of personal change.
Ozu portrays these people and those connected to them in a traditional family home setting and through a low-set, static camera that captures their conversations, actions, and expressions. As a humanist and a pragmatist, in Late Spring, Yasujirō Ozu explores two themes historically connected with the titular season. Themes picked up again in the movies Early Summer (1951) and Tokyo Story (1953): the cyclical nature of human life and the inevitability of transformation. All with his trademark gentle touch and a palpable compassion for the melancholy that inevitably arrives with change.
