I don’t really understand Ozu, and I probably never will, but if this is what not understanding feels like, I’m okay with that. It’s hard to single out a movie, because so much of the impact of Ozu’s films has to do with their cumulative relationship with each other, so I chose three by gut:

Late Spring, because the shot of Chishu Ryu peeling the apple is the peak of all of Ozu and maybe all of movies.

There Was a Father struck me as (deceptively) subversive for a film made during the war, and its central father-son relationship is especially tender.

Good Morning, a sort-of remake of Ozu’s own I Was Born, But . . ., is very funny, and a good reminder of his wonderful schoolboy sense of humor. (I remember reading or hearing someone observe that the farts in Good Morning don’t really sound like farts but more like the refined Platonic ideal of farts.