Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Screenplay: Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu
Starring: Shima Iwashita, Chishu Ryu, Keiji Sada, Mariko Okada, Teruo Yoshida, Noriko Maki
Running Time: 113 minutes
Genre: Drama
Tokyo, 1962: Shuhei Hirayama (Ryu) is a widowed businessman in his late 50s with three adult children. The eldest son, Koishi (Sada), is married and lives away from home, but his 24 year old daughter, Michiko (Iwashita) and youngest son, Kazuo (Shin'ichiro Mikami) still live at home with him. Under pressure from his friends, Hirayama realises that it is his duty to arrange a marriage for Michiko, even though she is in no hurry to get married at all.
This was Yasujiro Ozu's final film, completed a year before his death on his 60th birthday, and deals with many of his familiar themes: the ebb and flow of life, accepting change, the tension between youth and age, tradition and modernity, and the changing face of Japanese society, as well as the impermanence of all things. It's a very quiet, gentle film, composed of long static shots, elegantly composed and usually shot form low angles, with the action seen in medium close-up or framed in doorways and hallways. The main plot often plays out almost in the background, with many important events taking place off-screen, being more concerned with the small details of everyday life. This is a calm, understated film, graceful, slow, gentle and wise. It's the kind of film that makes the world seem a better and kinder place.
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