Late Ozu: End of Summer

I watched Kohayagawa-ke no aki, or The End of Summer last night. I've read a bit about Yasujiro Ozu, the director, and the ratings on netflix for his films are as high as any Herzog great so I went for it. This is actually the wrong film to start with, as it's part of a series, but I didn't miss anything really.

This guy does a better review than I could ever do:

Yasujiro Ozu clearly had a lot on his mind as he wrote The End of Summer, his penultimate film: the old vs. the new, generational shifts, family loyalty, death. It's all in there in this wonderfully elegiac film. Leave it to Ozu to make the smoke from a crematorium chimney look positively poetic. "It's the cycle of life," someone watching the smoke comments. Indeed.

My favorite aspect of the film was the dad, he was so joyous the whole time. I loved that he did whatever the hell he wanted, as long as it made him happy. I also love that despite the fact that he so obviously had this affair and even (perhaps) an 'illegitimate' child that the viewer (and his family) could still look up to him as a role model on how to live life. So way to go old man who wore the dish towel on his head because it's hot out, way to go.