A great film in some ways - but it's slow, slow, slow...

The recent Japanese movie "Still Walking" is the latest in a long and wonderful Japanese tradition of family drama, very much a direct descendant of the work of the great Ozu. Like Ozu's films, still walking is narrow and tight, almost claustrophobic, in its scope: almost all of it takes place during one day, in a small setting (seacoast town), in fact most of it in a small house in traditional Japanese style, tatami mats, floor-level dining table, sliding doors. The family gathers annual to mourn the death of the oldest son, died (in his 20s or so) in a drowning accident while rescuing a young boy - and film is about how this tragic death has affected everyone in the family, especially the younger son who can never live up to the image and expectations of his brother. Family members range from obsessively and meticulously nice and polite to gruff and cold beyond the point of rudeness - but even the "nice" ones (the mother in particular) show a flash of meanness and cruelty - especially during the great scene when the rescued boy comes to pay his annual respects. This is a totally honest film, unflinching, seems absolutely credible and understated - the famous Ozu "tatami" perspective, film shot almost in stills from floor level (not quite but almost) - and yet despite all these words of praise I have to add that Still Walking is soporific in its pace and seems by the end to slow to a crawl or even a dead stop. God know I don't need action or melodrama, but this is a film that, despite its strengths, is more to admire than to love.