Maborosi

This film by director Hirokazu Koreeda, is probably one of the more quietly beautiful films to come out of Japan in many years. It's about a young woman whose husband, seemingly out of nowhere, commits suicide/is killed, and the journey that tradgedy takes her on. It has scenese of astonishing lyrical beauty. It's part Yasujiro Ozu and part Terence Malick, and while probably not as good as either, it acheives its own brand of ethereality. There is very little dialogue throughout and the lighting is very natural. It's primarily shot in long-shots, with few close-up's, and very little camera movement. The camera sits and we watch (Ozu was the master of this). The final half-hour has a rare kind of visual poetry to it, as the woman quietly, but desperately asks why her husband would have done such a thing. One shot in particular stands out invovling a very long, static shot watching a slow moving procession move from one edge of the frame to the other.