On first meeting Ozu can baffle a Western audience and I suspect will be incomprehensible to a modern one raised on CGI and fast action and even faster story lines. Ozu is the complete opposite and deliberately so. He brought Zen to the cinema , not in a preachy way but in the technique he used to film with. Stories are told through a Japanese medium for example camera angles are often from floor level or held in such a way to reflect stillness rather than movement. Such movies glide along slowly at their own pace and thus the act of watcching becomes more of a meditation then a tradional movie going experience. The story ? Family, the beautifully observed , and universal tale, of aging parents coming from the country to the big city to visit grown up children with their own lives and own ideas. Beautiful and moving.
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