it’s slow, calm, private, intimate, and can I even say… sweet? as they say, he’s indeed a majestic mountain in the history of cinema. for a man who remained alone and single all his life, it’s beautiful how he tells the story of a father and daughter in post-war Japan under US occupation and in the midst of modernization. the kyoto sequence at the end, and the daughters speech seem so ancient and almost sappy in any context; yet in ozu’s hands, it just works like a charm. by dd