A STORY OF FLOATING WEEDS 1/2
(First Viewing)

A melodrama about a traveling actor and his son, who thinks he (the actor) is his (the son's) uncle. When "Uncle" comes to visit with his struggling acting troupe, the 20-year-old son falls in love with one of the actresses under the uncle, which causes a lot of drama as actors are very low class in the Japanese society of the time and the father left his son specifically to keep him away from such a low-class situation.

Even though I'm not a fan of silent films, this really impressed me. First of all, the score was absoultely amazing. It terms of silent films, I think the music is just as important as the dialogue because in a sense, it is the dialogue. It helps make the audience understand what the characters are feeling by the tone. Secondly, you can really learn a lot by the body language of characters in silent films. I think today as a society, we are constantly bombarded with words from fellow workers, advertisements, news outlets, etc. This film seemed to be taking place during a simpler time when this was, fortunately, not the case.