Gentle, poignant, moving, Ozu sticks to his customary style and develops the usual themes of the challenges life decisions, (marriage, attitudes of children to their parents, getting old) and how they affect a contemporary Japanese family. These are universal themes however and have resonance throughout time and across the continents. By the second half of this film you will wonder how you managed to become so absorbed in a story which seemed positively pedestrian in the first scenes. This is the genius of Ozu.

This is beautiful to look at, the director's legendary obsession with detail and the position of objects once again brings us interiors which are each a work of art, inter-cut with beautiful exterior landscapes and accompanied by some of the most soothing violin music you will ever hear, this is a real gem.

Late Spring was a very touching and profound film for me and a great example of a movie which tells its story more visually than with its narrative. This is something I appreciated very much as I do think Japanese films can sometimes have the tendency to spell things out a little too blatantly. It tells a story of marriage, not just between people, but between cultures, reflecting the rapid Westernization which Japan was experiencing during the period that this film was made. The way people sit, their furniture and the clothes they wear are all very important in showing where every character stands in this marriage between the old and the coming new during each scene. Good examples of this, which show the change taking place, are the contrast between the very first scene and the very last scene, as well as the two separate scenes which take place at the same bar. I really enjoy a film like this, for which you have to use a bit of thought to figure out what it's trying to get across, yet doesn't drive you completely crazy like for example 2001: A Space Odyssey.

A heartwarming, amazing, impeccable film.

I still remember the shock I felt when I saw this. Such a visually radical, contemplative film full of so much emotion that it's bursting at the seams. The same atmospheric quietude that there's in all of his late films, contemplative but so telling and never silent, much like the performances, particularly that of Hara Setsuko. Then there's the humor: there are some of the most hilarious things in this film that I know of, including Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd and the Marx brothers.

The story appears simple, of course. That's the Ozu way — a simple skeleton that he uses to build on, visually, above all. The first shot at the beginning of the film, perhaps the third or fourth of the whole film, when we enter the house for the first time, is such a powerful transitory shot spatially that it gives me goosebumps: first a few introductory shots outdoors, the train station and so on, and then suddenly we enter the confined space of the house as if we were lying on our belly on the ground, looking at a room from the far end of the hallway. And then Noriko (Hara) enters.

The movie is full of such magical moments. The most famous scene of the film, that at the Noh theatre, is one, them leaving Kyoto for the last time is another, the final scene of the film being the logical emotional climax. It's marvelous, really: it's not over the top as if it tried either to go for realism or mechanically manipulate our emotions. On the contrary, I believe Ozu succeeds emotionally because his films open quietly and slowly. He doesn't push us into accepting anything, and he doesn't push his characters into doing anything, either. Marvelously crafted as if everything just appeared in front of our eyes without any rehearsal. It's a sign of a great filmmaker to let us into the film so deeply. The images stay.