Critics reviews

Hen contains solitary people, whether isolated in close-up or walking alone, who want to break their solitude to help each other, but believe that they can only go so far. Throughout, it is suggested that Japanese society has repressed people so thoroughly that they have grown expert at punishing themselves.

What's different here [compared to Ozu's more well-known films] is that the film's sense of defeat—which forms a powerful subtext in most of his films in this period—is right on the surface. Hen has a way of illuminating the despair of Ozu's other movies: I think, for instance, of the strained relationships between Chishu Ryu and his grown children in Tokyo Story, which hints at a history of abuse but never articulates it.

The film is a display of controlled fury, as Ozu and his dignified leads navigate some of the most uncomfortable scenes Ozu has filmed, climaxing in an act of domestic violence unprecedented in his oeuvre. Despite its director's trademark placidness, the film gazes deeply into an unresolved emotional vortex of sex, guilt, honor and devotion.

The film, in any case, is suffused with a sense of defeat, but it ends with some rays of hope, however characteristically elliptical Ozu makes their expression. Once Shuichi finally agrees to forgive and forget Tokiko's transgression, it is significantly her gesture of accepting him – her hands clasping one another behind his back – that seals their reconciliation, before Ozu ends the film with everyday exterior shots of the neighbourhood.