Yasujiro Ozu: like Austen, he tells the same satisfying story again and again

Godzilla will no doubt scoff the global box office this weekend, and the roaring and gnashing of teeth on screen will find its analogue in the chaos of online debate between irate 1954 Gojira purists and whichever aficionados of the 1998 Emmerich-Devlin remake dare to reveal themselves. I say we remove ourselves to a calm, quiet place and concentrate on another Japanese film-maker working in the days when Tokyo's skies teemed with the gargantuan bestiary that came in Godzilla's wake.

Yasujiro Ozu's last movie, An Autumn Afternoon (1962), is one of the most sublime swansongs in the history of cinema, and confirms my belief that the best way to approach Ozu is the same way the Japanese read poetry: start at the end and work backwards. That's because Ozu's career combines his growing formal and artistic confidence with an opposing urge to simplify, to strip everything down to an austerely gorgeous minimum, and deny himself the technical comforts of the film stylist. The stationary thigh-high camera, always with the 50mm lens; the rigorously segmented framing; the carefully, even obsessively layered depth of field. And every gesture, every dip of the head or raised chin, every sip of tea or sake or Sapporo – all is choreographed to the millimetre.

For the decade of masterpieces that preceded An Autumn Afternoon, Ozu foreswore almost all technical innovation. With the exception of colour on six late features, there was not a single new formal-technical element in his movies after 1950. He wasn't adding, he was consciously subtracting. Thus when you work backwards through his career, the story becomes one of addition, enrichment, and after the exquisite plainsong of the later work, his early "excesses" suddenly seem hugely audacious and exciting. The first time I saw I Was Born, But… (1932), I was astonished to see majestic tracking shots and emotionally loaded forward-dolly movements, all long since winnowed away by Ozu in his search for formal exactitude and emotional precision.

Ozu is anything but dry. His nearest (distant) familiar equivalent is Jane Austen. Both deal with families, fathers and finances, daughters marriageable or not, and life's disappointments. Both essentially tell the same perfectly satisfying story again and again, each with an abiding, accepting wisdom about human relationships. Get yourself into Ozu's oeuvre and you'll be eagerly asking: who'll be the meddlesome aunt this time round (it's always Haruko Sugimura), and who's the daughter's mischievous best friend (ditto the imperishable Chikage Awashima)? And then you're addicted.

The difference? Austen wrote six novels and change. Ozu made 50 or more movies. You have the rest of your life for this man's work, and it will take you that long. Start today.