I wonder now if it's a reference to the different choices that the two characters, Hirayama and The Gourd make regarding marrying off their daughters after becoming widowers. Perhaps the title is saying that even if they did make radically different choices, we all end up hitori bocchi (alone) in the end. Any decision a person makes in their life ultimately results in the same ending: dying alone. Even though sanma (pike) and hamo (pike conger) are different species, perhaps they both taste similar?
It was a beautiful film, very slow and graceful, about ordinary people doing the most ordinary things. But behind these mundane things we do in life, it always felt like there was something larger at play, and I suppose that's why Ozu is revered as one of the masters of Japanese cinema.
I love how he composed his shots, so carefully, with the camera never budging an inch. It looked to me like he used the same focal length lens for every single frame in the film. I loved how he composed characters in the frame – almost like a photograph, and just let them talk at this slow speed. I loved all the characters and how they developed, they all just seemed so real. The actress who played Michiko (Hirayama's daughter) was incredibly beautiful, and her kimono were lovely (great to see them in colour).
Despite the lighthearted way the film moves along (and it is very funny – I found myself chortling out loud at several points) I suppose it all comes back to the same ideas Ozu dealt with in Tokyo Story: growing old is about dying alone. I'm a bit sad writing this now. 8/10
An Afterthought: The plot of this story reminded me a lot of Kawabata Yasunari's novel The Sound of the Mountain, except it lacked the perversity of Kawabata's novel. I suppose the trope of marrying off a girl from a family is a major theme in Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's The Makioka Sisters as well.
