Review: Yasujirō Ozu's "Tokyo Story" remains towering and devastating
Movie of the Week #25 is one of the very best films ever made
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Of all the movies that are exhaustively evangelized to pupils in film school, Yasujirō Ozu’s Tokyo Story might be the one I sense the most resistance towards from students. I cannot say I don’t understand. A 136-minute Japanese film with a bare, simple narrative and a direct, demandingly pure style could not be farther removed from modern cinematic aesthetics (though finding any filmmaker quite like Ozu, in the entire canon of film history, is an impossible task to begin with), and it does not necessarily surprise me that others my age find the film more of a historical chore than an artistically vibrant masterwork.
But that does not mean such resistance doesn’t sadden me. Tokyo Story is, simply put, as excellent a film as has ever been made, and shines every bit as brightly today as it did in 1953. There are observations made here about the human condition that will never fail to resonate, so long as civilization continues to endure, and I cannot imagine a time in which what the film has to say about family, modernity, death, and grief shall be anything less than profoundly impactful. That it is so beautifully acted and artfully executed, qualities that one should be able to celebrate regardless of era (and no filmmaker alive today is making movies as quietly, forcefully intoxicating as Tokyo Story, regardless of subject matter or technical innovations), is almost secondary in my consideration to raw emotional impact, which Tokyo Story provides in waves of increasingly high crest. Perhaps we do students a disservice by forcing it upon them, emphasizing the film’s historical technique, cinematic impact, and contemporary resonance over the intensely personal experience it has the capacity to provide. I see my peers resisting the film, and I hope it will not one day be forgotten by successive generations who fail to connect with it. Few movies, I think, are more worthy of one’s investment.
Being the rare work that manages to be both completely of its historical moment and universally timeless, it is easy to overlook modern relevance when discussing Tokyo Story. Certainly, the film is constructed as a contrast between one generation and another, in a period following massive social upheaval for post-war Japan, and concepts like industrialization (many of Ozu’s interstitial shots focus on billowing plumes of smoke, steamboats, trains, or other products of increased industrial development) and dehumanization (elder siblings Kōichi and Shige are emotionally stunted as a direct product of life in the busy, competitive city of Tokyo) are central pieces of the thematic framework. Perhaps most strikingly, the entire film is shot through with an intense, unshakable sadness for the losses and horrors of the war, from father Shūkichi coping through drink to daughter-in-law Noriko circling in an unfulfilling holding pattern after the death of her husband.
But when are ideas like these not remarkably pertinent? Modernity may be the canvas upon which Ozu paints his narrative, and while it is a specifically Japanese, precisely post-war modernity, it is one peoples of any time and place should be able to identify with. One generation always feels disappointment or confusion in the next, for the lives our elders lead shall always be different than the ones we are exposed to. Parents and children shall always drift apart to a certain degree, if there is time enough for them to do so. Urban sprawl, increased mechanization, and perceived dehumanization shall always be troublesome for those who live long enough to witness the march of progress (positive or negative) in action, and I wonder how far back in history one would have to go to find a society not touched by war, in one way or another. These are issues the Japanese public dealt with at the time of the film’s release, but they are concepts humans have struggled with since the dawn of civilization, and shall continue to grapple with for centuries to come.
Ozu’s film excels as a portrait of its contemporary setting and a universal tale of growth and loss for the exact same reason: It is calmly told, sharply observed, and beautifully constructed. Of course, this is true of his entire body of work, and it is why I have come to personally cite him as the greatest filmmaker of all time. The consistency of his filmography and its thematic and aesthetic project means no one film rises distinct from his oeuvre quite to the degree, say, Seven Samurai does for Akira Kurosawa, though for me, it comes down to Late Spring and Tokyo Story as the two highest peaks of his career. Late Spring has always been my favorite, while Tokyo Story is the one that’s always landed near the top in polls of the greatest films ever made, and while that’s partially because it was simply the first film of Ozu’s most Westerners were exposed to, I do think there’s something to the conventional wisdom. There is a scope to Tokyo Story, in the big and complicated family dynamics it traces, and in the emotional space it charts, that is both deeply rooted in the specifics of Japanese history and culture, and utterly transcendent of all national or chronological borders. It is universal. Everyone on earth has family, everyone experiences varying distance and changing dynamics within that family, and everyone experiences loss – Tokyo Story expresses these things better and more powerfully than any film in the history of the cinema. It deserves to be ranked near the top of any attempt at ranking the ‘greatest’ works of cinematic art. It truly is that magnificent.
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