What is it about a film like The Only Son that sets it apart from the cinema we’re used to seeing? Give a specific example from the film, and describe it as well as you can.

“Of all Japanese directors,” writes Tadao Sato, “Yasujiro Ozu has been considered the most Japanese” (Currents in Japanese Cinema, p. 185). Whether or not this is an accurate way to characterize Ozu, it is true that Ozu’s films took much longer to find an audience abroad than his contemporaries such as Kenji Mizoguchi and Akira Kurosawa. This probably has something to do with the way Ozu’s films look; even today his style seems somehow strange and unfamiliar, even though the films are not experimental in any obvious way. What is it about a film like The Only Son that sets it apart from the cinema we’re used to seeing? Give a specific example from the film, and describe it as well as you can.

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