Late Spring ending explained

What happens

Noriko marries and leaves. At home, Shukichi admits to a friend that his promised remarriage was a lie, told so she would go. Now he is alone in the empty house.

The last image

Shukichi sits alone in the quiet house, peeling an apple, and slowly lowers his head.

What it says

Love sometimes means letting go. The father pays for his daughter's future with his own loneliness. Ozu ends on that silence, not the wedding, because the cost of the gift is where the feeling lives.