Tokyo Story - Criterion Collection | Keiko Kishi, Tadao Sato

Tokyo Story - Criterion Collection | Keiko Kishi, Tadao Sato | Yosujiro Ozu' masterpiece

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Tokyo Story - Crit...

	Tokyo Story - Criterion Collection Keiko Kishi, Tadao Sato Criterion, 2003 average customer review:based on 51 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatari) follows an aging couple, Tomi and Sukichi, on their journey from their rural village to visit their two married children in bustling, post-war Tokyo. Their reception, however, is disappointing: too busy to entertain them, their children send them off to a health spa. After Tomi falls ill, she and Sukichi return home, while the children, grief-stricken, hasten to be with her. From a simple tale unfolds one of the greatest of all Japanese films. Starring Ozu regulars Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara, the film reprises one of the director's favorite themes?that of generational conflict?in a way that is quintessentially Japanese and yet so universal in its appeal that it continues to resonate as one of cinema?s greatest masterpieces.

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First Kindness, Then Justice

"Be kind to your parents while they are alive. Filial piety does not extend beyond the grave."
-Buddhist Proverb

"Sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child."
-Wm. Shakespeare "King Lear"

An elderly couple from the country visit their adult children in the big city and are treated with rudeness and dismissiveness. The spouses of their children are noticably much kinder and more compassionate. Sometimes, it is easier to be nice to people you hardly know and have no history with than people you have known all your life. The vacation is a disappointment and because of this the aftermath is that much sadder and more poignant.

Ozu's masterpiece is a slow, meditative examination of the mixed feelings of relationships and the contradictory nature of human personalities. The overall theme of Ozu's mature work is the understanding that life is inevitably sad and disappointing. There are happinesses but nothing really works out and lonliness and regret are pervasive. Children disappoint their parents by not living up to expectations either personally or professionally. Children are disappointed by their all-too-human imperfect parents.

Through his signature tatami-level camerawork and his meticulous no-frills sets, camerawork and direction, Ozu's explorations of life are deceptively simple. By paring filmmaking down to the bare essentials, he allows the characters to develop and reveal themselves as truly universal in their emotions, wants, needs and failings. Ozu's world of middle class post-war Japanese is all the more realistic because the characters are neither good nor evil, neither heroes nor villians. He generously portrays his characters in shades of gray, rather than a didactic black and white. Even the rude, sullen adult children have moments of compassion, kindness and grief. The elderly couple, initially seen as benignly smiling and gracious are slowly revealed as occassionally selfish, judgemental and irresponsible both in the past and the present. Ozu shunned drama for the careful understanding of normal people in normal everyday activity. Birth, death, weddings, funerals, marriage, childrearing, work, play, sex, meals, love and dating are all treated with a matter-of-factness that allows the drama of human emotions and personalities to take center stage.

The two-disk Criterion editon comes with an excellent commentary by Ozu film scholar David Desser, a fine two hour documentary about Ozu and a disappointingly poorly made tribute piece of several contemporary directors acknowledging Ozu's influence. The commentary is the real treat. Desser clearly loves his subject and, like any excellent teacher, takes pains to share his love with the listener.

Tokyo Story's reputation has grown through the years. Released in 1953 to muted praise, it did not see widespread distribution in the west until the 70's, during which it was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. During the 50's and 60's, the vast majority of attention paid to Japanese cinema was paid to the most Western of all Japanese filmmakers, Akira Kurosawa. Ozu, conversely, is seen as the most Japanese of all Japanese directors. Kurosawa, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, deserved the attention but it came at the expense of his contemporaries who only recently have begun to get their just due. Until the 70's, Ozu's Tokyo Story was the best kept secret in world cinema. The secret is out. Tokyo Story is one of the great masterpieces of world cinema.

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Yosujiro Ozu' masterpiece

First at all, I should remark this is a milestone film in the history of cinema, and according the British Film Institute one of the five greatest films ever made.

The poetic intensity of this overpowering movie transcends by far any egregious epithet. A deeply, poignant and touching drama about an elderly couple who travels to Tokyo, where they are unenthusiastically received by his children.

But it's such the narrative power and the unforgettable shots along this masterpiece, that you will be engaged from start to finish.

I politely invite you to acquire this memorable masterwork, and once you have watched you will necessarily include among the milestone films ever seen through your existence.

The cast, the emotive and tender scenes ( the grandmother and her unworried grandson picking up flowers, is a true landmark sequence) , the multiple issues around a new generation with lack of personality, enthusiasm permeated by an absolute indifference, is just a part of this artful script, whose nostalgic gaze about an emerging Tokyo from the ashes of the WW2 will spell you.

An immortal masterpiece and one of my top twenty films ever made.

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Masterpiece

There are many roads to greatness. This is a notion that I have always held to be true. No greater example of this could be given than by comparing the films of two of the greatest filmmakers from Japan. Of course, most people have heard of Akira Kurosawa and his classics like Seven Samurai, Rashomon, and Ikiru. But there is also Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963), whose canon of films is set in modern times far more often than Kurosawa's. Where Kurosawa was grand, Ozu is small. Where Kurosawa was kinetic, Ozu was static. Where Kurosawa celebrated the epic, Ozu celebrated the ordinary. Yet, despite their differences, their greatest films are indisputable masterpieces of cinema, even if they achieve their ends in seemingly contradictory ways.
Perhaps the greatest of all Ozu films is his 1953 black and white classic Tokyo Story (Tokyo monogatari), which follows a simple story outline, unfolds very slowly - the film is two hours and fifteen minutes long, builds its power through the slow accumulation of facts, and the deft, but subtle revelation of character. In short, it's everything that Hollywood films are not, and it would never have been produced there, then or now. It has been derided as being stale, dull, and plodding, even as it has alternately been chided as melodramatic and a third rate soap opera. Such definitions only go to show how little the claimants know of the words they wield.
It is true, that nothing much of `excitement' happens in the film- no murders, car chases, explosions, steamy sex scenes. It follows an old couple, from the small town of Onomichi, on a long train trip to Tokyo to visit their grown children. Some have seen the film as a remake of Leo McCarey's 1937 Hollywood sudser, Make Way For Tomorrow, but Tokyo Story is to that film what Long Day's Journey Into Night is to The Bold & The Beautiful. There, the old couple see the town, are shunted aside, then return home. The mother dies, the children come to visit, and there are some revelations, but most of the living family members just return to their own patterns of life. Yet, having watched soap operas for many years, I can tell you this film soars well beyond soap operas, which rely on archetypes and stereotypes, and the most silly plot contrivances. Everything in this film happens as it would in reality. Plus, Ozu does not milk scenes for their overwrought emotions. In fact, he wields his edits like a rapier, and excises scenes that soap operas and more standard films would include. Tokyo Story is no shameless tearjerker.
Ozu is the master of narrative ellipses. As example, we do not see an early emotional farewell scene between the parents and their youngest daughter Kyoko. We do not see the parents' first stay with their youngest son Keizo (Shiro Osaka), in Osaka, as they head toward Tokyo. Another technique he mastered is that of developing subplots, such as that of the widowed daughter-in-law, Noriko, who treats the old couple far better than all but one of their children. Yet, she is not hagiographized at the expense of the other children, even as they are not demonized for their lack of care for their parents. They are simply caring and selfish, as most people are to a certain degree.
Tokyo Story is a great film, all the way around, but it was ignored for many years until it was re-released in New York in 1972, with the publication of Paul Schrader's Transcendental Style In Film. Twenty years later, in the 1992 Sight And Sound film critics poll, Tokyo Story was ranked as one of the ten greatest films ever made. In 2002 it repeated that feat. It is not a film that provides easy answers, and it lacks all the phony sentimentality and contrivances Hollywood films wallow in. It is not melodramatic in the least. When Shige, as example, bursts out in tears, when Koichi says their mother has not long to live, it is not Ozu's melodrama, but the character's own, and there is a huge difference in recognizing that. That the film so perfectly captured all the Japanese conventions of the era, yet still resonates with worldwide audiences, is the mark of a great work of art, and a testament to the great circularly narrative screenplay by Ozu and Kôgo Noda, which deftly interweaves symbolism, such as train tracks and laundry, while capturing the way real people talk and react. Never is there a forced moment nor false reaction. The character building is superb, and the very relaxed and slow pace of the film shows what such a style can do. The film's score, by Kojun Saito is a tad over the top, at times, but understated far more often than not.
If only Criterion had done their usual good job with this film the experience would have been perfect. But, don't let that deter any lover of great cinema from basking in one of the great films of all time. Tokyo Story makes its own leisurely way, but where it heads to is where all art desires to be.

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One of the best films ever made.

Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)

It says something-- though I'm not sure what-- about my culture that IMDB's "if you liked this you'll like..." recommendations for Tokyo Monogatari include The Grudge and Spider-Man 2. Whatever it says, I'm pretty sure it's not good. For Tokyo Monogatari is an entirely different film, not in the same genre-- not even in the same ballpark, or for that matter the same zip code-- as those movies. Perhaps not even the same planet. Action? Terror? Attractive if vapid soul-searching protagonist? Escapism? Hardly.

Tokyo Monogatari is the story of an elderly rural couple (Chishu Ryu and Cheiko Higashiyama) who go to visit their children in Tokyo. Their children have no time for them and, with the awkwardness into which everyone is spun by the parents' arrival, ship them off to the hot springs. While they are there, the wife takes ill, and the couple return home; in a reversal of the original premise, the second act has the children rushing to the couple's rural home, berating themselves and each other over their not making time for their parents.

This is an exceptionally slow film, and that is not helped by the fact that there are parts of it that are quite uncomfortable to watch-- not because they tread on delicate subject matter or anything like that, but because Ozu and Noda's script recreates the kind of quotidian dialogue one hears in real life in vivid detail. Note that I'm not talking about the sort of brilliant rapidfire banter that one gets from, say, a Tarantino script, but the endless, annoying small talk that people make just to pass the time. There are a lot of people who don't like this movie-- who detest it, really-- because of this. And, yes, it makes the first half-hour of the film hard to suffer through. But that's the point of it. Ozu is introducing us to shallow characters, and the characters who actually have some sort of life are reduced to talking to them on their level. Once you get to the climax of the film, it all makes sense, as the true shallowness of some of these characters is revealed. In the interim, however, we are treated to characters that are drawn in exquisite detail, with Ryu's especially becoming deeper and deeper as we see more facets of the person he is (and how those facets grate, of course, on the shallow people around him).

Film historians debate-- idly, of course-- whether Kurosawa or Ozu was the definitive postwar Japanese director. It's an impossible debate, given that both of them stand head and shoulders above everything else Japan was doing at the time (and, for that matter, most of what the rest of the world was doing). I tend to see them more as complementary; Kurosawa's big, bold action films stand beside Ozu's quiet, contemplative pieces to provide a coherent, and brilliant, whole. This, perhaps Ozu's strongest outing, is a perfect complement to something like Yojimbo. **** ½

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Enchanting film

At the film festival where I watched this film, almost half the audience got up and walked out long before the end - that will tell you that it is not a film that will have mass appeal, especially if you take into account that film festival audiences are normally more into art films than the "normal" filmgoing public. Nevertheless, it is a beautiful movie, which will richly reward those with the patience to carefully consider what is happening and what is being said.

An elderly Japanese couple living in a rural town decides to visit their children in Tokyo. There is the doctor Koichi, the hairdresser Shige and their daughter-in-law Noriko, who works as a lowly clerk in an administrative office. She was married to their son who was killed eight years before during World War Two. On the way to Tokyo they stop at Osaka station, where they meet up with their other son. The old couple is not really welcome in Tokyo, Koichi and Shige being far too busy with their own lives to sacrifice time to spend with them. The cramped space in the Tokyo apartments also means that it is quite uncomfortable for them. Only Noriko gives up her time and specially takes off from work to show them around. She goes out of her way to make them feel welcome. The children send the old couple off to a spa to get rid of them. The spa does not cater for their more sedate lifestyle and they decide to go back home. Upon returning to Tokyo unexpectedly, they find that their children cannot put them up for the night and they are forced to split, the mother staying with Noriko and the father forced to look up some old friends from his village now staying in Tokyo. On the way back home, the mother falls ill and she has a stroke upon her arrival back home. The children has to hurry if they still want to see her before she dies, forcing them to look into their priorities to decide how they will handle this new development.

So far the storyline. Not much outward action, with the action (feelings and emotions) happening within the characters. The major clue the viewer get is through the scene setting and the words and being Japanese, they are polite to a fault. It is only once you put yourself into the shoes of the characters that the emotional force hits you and the understatement actually adds to the impact. This is aided beautifully by the scene setting. In one scene, when the old couple realises that they have to make alternate arrangements to spend the night, they are sitting on the sidewalk eating their lunch (like hobos would, but still in the dignified manner they portray throughout the film), and the father says: "Now we are really homeless". This is just one example of how the setting and the words complement each other.

The film has a lot going for it. It is an in-depth study of ordinary people in an ordinary family and their lives, frustrations, ambitions and relationships. It examines how people are so preoccupied with what is happening in their own small worlds that they lose sight of what is really important in life. It sheds light not only on the parent-child relationship, but is also very insighful in its portrayal of the relationship between the mother and father. Whilst they are clearly happy together, there is just the hint of their past and present relational problems and a subtle reminder of the need to cherish that which is precious, especially if it is not everlasting. It is enlightening about Japanese culture, manners and way of doing things and it sheds a great deal of light on that nation's psyche after World War Two. The generally polite and reserved nature of conversation is only sometimes breached, always with significant impact, as when the mother opens up her heart to Noriko ("I am a burden to everyone") or when at the end Noriko opens up her heart to her father-in-law about her desires. Because this happens out of culture and is a rare portrayal of intimacy, the impact is enhanced.

A beautiful film then, which can be regarded as a true classic. Why only four and not five stars? The subtitles were a little disappointing. Whilst I do not know Japanese, the subtitles sometimes seemed clumsy and not as refined as one would expect, which was out of step with the general sophisticated "feel" of the film ("It is such a privilege to sleep in my dead son's bed" is one example). I suspect that the translators did not always capture the essence of the meaning, rather concentrating on a literal translation. Often there is conversation with no subtitles - whilst one suspect that it is mundane conversation such as "thank you" or "good morning", it is disconcerting to hear people talking and not see the subtitles. Towards the end, with the essential messages already delivered, the film then dragged on a bit, with no new insights being added - bearing in mind it is already slow-moving.

A wonderful film, thoroughly recommended - but not everybody's cup of tea.

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