Tokyo Story

viewed February 27, 2000 on video

For full information about this film, click here

Each of the three times I've seen this film I wonder more if there is a more perfect film out there.  My latest viewing once again filled me with a dual apprehension: that this film in its two hour span states everything on my mind that I would want to say in a movie, so that there's nothing for me to say, my job has been done; and that I still need to say something anyway, but it will have to be in a way that stands apart from this flawless work of human beauty.  No one can use the word derivative to describe director Yasujiro Ozu's style.  His way of assembling a slowly unraveling series of carefully selected, unmoving camera shots explores film space in a subtle but powerful way that brings attention to the spaces between people and comments on the physical nature of human interactions.  He sets a lofty standard for original, meaningful filmmaking.

The plot reads like simple melodrama:  an aging couple living in rural Japan makes a weeklong journey to Tokyo to see their grown-up children one last time.  It is a week full of disappointments as the children are more intent on their daily affairs than on caring for their parents.  Their son, a doctor, is busy making housecalls.  Their daughter, a hairdresser, simply can't be bothered, always worrying how much money it will cost to entertain her parents.  They even send their parents to a resort (a cheap one, the daughter insists) just to get them out of their hair, completely ignoring the fact that the purpose of the parents' visit was to see how their children were doing.

Ozu takes this plot and fills it with such significance, as if it speaks for all parents and children, and the abyss of misunderstanding and disappointment lying in wait between them.  Instead of making an invective against a generation of materialistic Japanese who neglect their families, he gives the story space to breathe and expand, to take in all sides, giving the viewer time to meditate and leaving him with a profound sense of the sad ways of fate.

Ozu accomplishes his unique effects with various techniques.  Not only are his camera shots static, they take in the scene from a relatively low perspective, as if seen from the eyes of someone kneeling on the tatami mat spread upon the floor.  Indeed, this camera angle is known as the "tatami shot" since Ozu used it almost exclusively for his interiors.  He also violates the 180 degree line repeatedly, shooting two figures from opposing angles in such a way that their relative positions aren't linearly connected, as you would find in a typical Hollywood movie.  The result is a more open feeling of interior space, a jarring effect that makes one more alert to the relationship between people and their surroundings.  

The story is wonderfully textured as well, its dialogue peppered with casual allusions to the family's past, that open up our perspective of a sad present.  The parents, now so subdued and gentle, had their own issues back when the family was one unit.  He often quarreled with the children, stayed out drinking and often came home late to his hapless wife.  These accounts seem improbable in the face of such a wizened old man, but they lend a lot of insight into why the family relationships are in such an estranged state.

He also has his actors play the soft notes on the emotional scale, always smiling and speaking politely while keeping their true feelings suppressed behind a mask of Japanese good manners.  This effect sustains a feeling of tension throughout the narrative, as the children are uncomfortable having their parents around while the parents pretend not to notice.  When emotions do come out, the effects on the viewer are devastating, such as the grandmother's confession to her dead son's widow.  Out of politeness, the daughter-in-law tells her it's time to sleep and shuts out the light; she has the consideration not to watch her mother weeping.

The widowed daughter-in-law is played by Setsuko Hara, considered in her time as the quintessential Japanese woman.  Her character is easily the most interesting of the film.  She is not even a blood relative, and yet she is the only one who takes the parents out on a day trip and gladly welcomes them into her shabby one room apartment for dinner and a bottle of sake (borrowed from her neighbor).  The parents notice the shrine to their son, killed in the war, and offer their condolences.  They also mention what a reckless young man he had been, often going out to get drunk.  The daughter merely shakes her head and smiles.  

On the surface, this film seems to bend towards conservatism, tradition and nostalgia, with Setsuko Hara the poster girl for such values.  But each time I see this film I get a greater sense of being stuck between a present that charges relentlessly forward and a past that seems sweet only in retrospect.  What the parents witness in the city is a nightmarish inversion of everything traditional.  Their son is a hapless doctor struggling to make ends meet, while their daughter is the real go-getter, materialistic and frugal, bending both her husband and brother to her will.  Here one can see the ills of modern Japanese society: the son as salary man trapped in his career, the daughter symbolizing a traditionalist's nightmare vision of the modern woman, running the show, ambitious yet hopelessly self-centered.  One could argue that modern Japan was built on the heedless drive of people like her, but through Ozu's eyes we come to hate her profoundly for most of the movie.  

However, our conservative sentiments are disrupted when the daughter-in-law confesses that she doesn't miss her late husband much at all, and is far more worried about whether she will remain a widow forever.  She doesn't like herself for her selfish thoughts, but they're there anyway, and she will never lose them.  She will not be like the mother, silently standing in the shadow of her husband forever.  Her confession has the effect of an earthquake, shaking the moral foundation by which we condemned the other children who neglected the parents.  It's as if self-centeredness was a disease that had just claimed another victim of the post-war generation of Japanese.  

But it is more than that.  It is an honest statement on the modern human condition, endemic to all societies that have undergone the struggle to develop themselves to compete in the global economy.  This is not just the story of one fragmented Japanese family, but of my own -- of post-war Asia, and all of the industrialized world.  The children go to the city to find a better living for themselves, only to be sucked into a lifestyle of constant labor, struggle and anxiety.  The father admits in private that he had thought his son was a rich doctor, but it turns out he is a common practitioner.  And of course the son would sense his father's disappointment -- and this may be the real reason why he can't bear to spend any real time with his parents.  Perhaps, more than anything, it is our dreams for a better life that have made us strangers to our own families.

There is moment towards the end when a young woman is infuriated by her own sister's cruelty to her; she asks Setsuko Hara if life is always going to be so disappointing.  She replies, "Yes I'm afraid it is," and even supposes that as she gets older, she will also become more cruel to others.  She says all of this with a sweet, heartbreaking smile that means so many things: consolation, neurosis, courage.  It is a quiet, subtle expression, but it seems to carry with it all the wisdom of the 20th century.

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