Ozu's 'Tokyo Story' (1953) Remains an Emotional Tour-de-Force after 60 Years: S&S Ch
Heading into this week's Sight & Sound challenge, I knew that I'd be shifting gears a bit. Whereas Vertigo and Citizen Kane are steepd in visual richness and narrative melodrama, Yasujiro Ozu's films are, by contrast, minimalist in design and understated in emotion. I've seen a couple of his other films, like Late Spring (1949), so I was anticipating a shift in mood with the arrival of the third film on Sight & Sound's '50 Best Films' list: Tokyo Story (1953).
I had a distinct feeling there would be no psychedelic Jimmy Stewart dreams here.
RIP
The third film in Ozu's 'Noriko' trilogy, Tokyo Story follows an elderly couple, Shukichi and Tomi, as they travel from their small town of Onomichi to Tokyo, where they hope to visit two of their children. Once they've arrived, however, it becomes clear that the two children, Koichi and Shige, have no time for them. Koichi is a pediatrician and is constantly working, while Shige owns a beauty parlour and tries to pawn her parents off on her husband and sister-in-law to avoid spending time with or money on them. The only relative who shows Shukichi and Tomi any kindness whatsoever is Noriko, their widowed daugter-in-law who had previously been married to their second eldest son, Shoji. Though she isn't related to them by blood, Noriko makes an active effort to welcome her parents-in-law. Unlike her late husband's siblings, Noriko holds Shukichi and Tomi in higher esteem, caring for them like they were her own parents.
Suck-up.
Shukichi and Tomi eventually head back home, where Tomi falls ill and sadly dies. Her children, then, begin the film's final act by reversing their parents' earlier journey: they must now make the effort to see their family.
They must also confront their own negligence.
The beauty of Tokyo Story lies in its simplicity. Some might find the pacing strange. Ozu allows shots to linger a fraction of a second longer than our internal clocks might find necessary. His camera is languorous, travelling from shot to shot with a relaxed sort of air. He also infamously betrays the well-known "180 Degree Rule," which says that the camera should never pass the line of action, or the filmmaker risks disorienting its viewers.
Ozu throws this to the wind.
Pictured: A Rebel without a Cause
The combination of a slower editing speed and the violation of the 180 Degree Rule makes Tokyo Story a bizarre exploration of space and time. However, this aesthetic is perfectly suited to the film's subject matter.
For instance, Ozu often lingers on settings long after the characters have left them. These settings, usually rooms in apartments or houses, become ghostly, eerily existing without the agency of the film's characters. The film's exploration of old age matches this phantom effect: Do you still exist when others have stopped caring about you? Are we still real when the camera has been turned off?
Through these shots, Ozu forces his viewers to confront the same issues as his characters, namely, the decay of identity and personhood throughout old age.
Pictured: Just a Couple of Non-Persons
This is the genius of Ozu's film. He explores the cycle of caring and forgetting prevalent in most families: parents care for their children, who, once old enough, neglect these same parents, only to be later forgotten by their own children. It's a vicious cycle of family decay, and one that Ozu seems to find unavoidable, were it not for characters like Noriko, who, ironically enough, is not even related to her parents-in-law by blood, yet cares for them more than their own children.
The genius comes from Ozu's ability to tackle this dramatically rich subject without succumbing to melodrama. Instead, he takes a nuanced approach, a naturalistic approach, leaving his actors looking less like actors and more like unwary subjects of a strange documentary. Shukichi and Tomi nurse their hurt in private while publicly refusing to let their children see how much pain they've caused them. It's the age-old tactic of trying to keep things as normal as possible, refusing to acknowledge family issues until they become overwhelming.
For these reasons, Tokyo Story is a film we still need, even in the year 2015. Ozu's masterpiece of family life and decay transcends generations, borders, and style preferences. It is, quite simply, a startlingly poignant exploration of what it means to be a family.
I give this film 4/4 Useless Children
