So this is the first “repeat” of a sort in this list, in that it’s by the director of Tokyo Story. It turns out that he’s one of those directors who likes working with certain actors, because much of the cast of that movie is in this one, too — it’s actually referred to as part of the “Noriko trilogy” because one of the actresses is named Noriko in three films (Tokyo Story and Early Summer being the others), but the character is a wholly different person in each movie, and they’re not connected in any direct way.

The plot of this one is straightforward: Noriko lives with her widowed father, taking care of him; her aunt is concerned that she hasn’t yet married (she’s 27), and the father realizes that she’s right, and sets about to marry her off. Noriko is resistant to the idea — because, she ultimately says, she’s happy as things are and doesn’t want them to change — but ultimately accedes for the sake of her family and gets reluctantly married to a dude who never appears onscreen.

But that bare outline doesn’t do the movie justice. It is subtle and ambiguous, and it’s not clear how you should think about any of the characters’ actions. Is the aunt just a meddling busybody, or is she providing the needed impetus for something that should have happened long ago? Is Noriko’s reluctance to get married and leave her current situation a childish refusal to grow up and accept that you can’t just stay at home with your parents forever, or is it a reasonable contentedness in a happy situation? Is her father’s marriage advice really given with the intent of telling her how to be happy, or is it a chilling order to appear happy for the sake of others?

It is, in short, the kind of movie that gets you thinking about the nature of relationships and society and families and leaves the space for you to come to your own opinions rather than have them thrust at you predigested by the director.

On top of that, the movie is also dealing with the rapid changes in Japanese society at the time, many of them imposed by an occupying American military force. Noriko’s best friend is freshly divorced (newly legal under American-imposed laws, apparently) and living in a very Westernized home; at one point, Noriko and a young man ride bicycles out to the beach on what seems like a date and pass by English signs (a weight limit warning on a bridge and a Coca-Cola ad), and it seems to be subtly contrasting the Western-style “date” with the traditional family-arranged marriage.

(The movie was actually released under a regime of American censorship, and there were changes made to the script by the censors, like replacing a reference to Tokyo being “ruins” with it being “dusty.”)

There’s a lot in the movie, and you could — and I’m sure film people have — write essay after essay looking at the movie from a zillion different angles, teasing out more depth each time. This is a no-questions, flat-out brilliant movie. A++ highly recommended.