It's the story of a lighthouse guard, his wife, his aging father, their children and their friends. Spread out over almost a decade, it tells a tale of dedication, to family, to work, to service, to country.
Keisuke Kinoshita would seem to have mellowed from the man who produced angry and sardonic pictures in the 1950s. In fact, this looks like his earliest movies, propaganda efforts for a Japan at war. I think that, once he was freed from the censors, he made those movies about the evils in Japan that fell short of his vision of how his countrymen should behave: family, with love and concern, and then serving some greater purpose, something that benefits everyone. In this one, people are motivated by love, and, as one of the characters notes, other people make fun of him, but he doesn't care.
Kinoshita gets in a few sly jokes. Two characters discuss how they cried at seeing this very movie. Two of the women discuss the doors, and suddenly you notice the camera sinking to the tatami mat and you are looking at a shot from an Ozu movie as Kinoshita saw it, a loving family that takes care of each other. Also a Shimizu movie. In the 1930s, Shimizu made travelogue movies, simple stories that served as the foreground for shots of the quiet beauty of Japan. Here, Kinoshita does much of the same, with his portraits of lighthouses in sun and snow and storm, of temples and quiet beaches. there is so much beauty,Kinoshita seems to say, so much love. What more do we need?
And at the end, Reiko Ôhara, the wife and daughter-in-law, mother and friend, seeing her newly graduated son on the boat, says "At least he's not going to war."
