Hiroshi Shimizu’s little jewel of a film starts out all bland and tiny, but by sticking to its guns, or maybe its extraordinarily simple and single-minded structure/method, it ends by being something very considerable. Up the mountain and down, stopping and starting, chatting and being silent. Nothing to it! But this simplicity ingratiates, then insinuates, and finally accumulates really powerfully. The repeated camera figure of tracking up and then leaving behind is hypnotic, full of historical and sociological substance, and really poignant. Nature and culture, town and country, cruelty and kindness. Lovely. Could this be based on de Maupassant? Or, it’s heterogenesis: it seems that every time and place encounters the same challenges, comes to the same great conclusions.