Ichikawa's supremely beautiful rendering of a celebrated novel by Soseki Natsume, set in 1912, as Japan enters the modern era with the death of the emperor, Kokoro-translated as "heart," but more akin to "feelings"-is about the friendship between a university student and an older teacher he meets on the beach, a relationship that culminates in suicide and a harrowing revelation of betrayal. Disclosure and confession are central to the film, as they are in The Outcast, but the oblique, almost Resnaisian way in which the story unfolds, with its overwhelming sense of emotional withdrawal and dissembling, make The Heart a remarkably modern work.-James Quandt