Tokyo Story (U)

Maybe I read more than should be read in Tokyo Story, but I could totally understand why the children seemed removed from their parents and why the person who didn't grow up with them, Noriko, the dutiful daughter-in-law, was so much more attentive to their needs when they visited Tokyo. Noting that the children were distracted by modern life, so they couldn't fit the needs of the parents during their visit (except for angelic Noriko), which therefore meant this was a commentary on familial alienation and disappointment based on solely this one-dimensional reading, is a bit too facile and simplistic. The family dynamics here were far more convoluted and painful than meets the eye--you definitely have to read between the lines (and beautifully composed shots) to understand what's really going on. While watching this masterpiece, all I could think about was the famous opening line from Anna Karenina, "All happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." The subtle little hints Ozu dropped throughout told of a much more painful family past. This realization came down like a thunderclap in the most pivotal scene, I think, of the film--when the father returns from the bar drunk to his daughter's house in the middle of the night unannounced. There's a scene, seemingly throw-away, where the daughter stares out into the distance while seated on the edge of her bed, with the husband looking at her confused from behind, waiting for her directions. And you see such anger and disappointment and trauma in the eyes of the daughter upon having deal with her drunken father. It's for a split second, but that one scene tells you so much about the dynamics roiling beneath the placid exteriors of this movie. You then link up this shot with the seemingly throw-away line of the mother, much earlier in the film, stating with a sad and weary cadence that she hoped that her children would not take to alcohol. And that's when you realize--the father was likely a terrible (possibly violent?) drunk who probably emotionally scarred the children (though maybe not the mother, but maybe so) when they were younger. This may have been the reason why the children couldn't stomach their parents' visit--it dragged up too much emotional baggage from the past for them to deal with in their busy urban lives, so they just let them know that they were unwelcome. Noriko carried none of this baggage--she was a tabula rasa as it pertains to this deep history with the family's skeletons in the closet--so she was the only one willing to treat them civilly. Such emotional background explains the daughter's behavior quite well. She was always extremely callous with the father, and by conjunction with the mother. She may have been hiding rancor against the father for obvious reasons, but also for the mother, since the daughter probably felt that her mother didn't stand up for herself and her children against the father's drunkenness (you could tell that the mother was always submissive to the father, so she may have been equally submissive when the family was younger). I come to this conclusion because the daughter seemed like she wore the pants in her marriage--the daughter's husband was always submitting to her will (very subtly). So one could surmise that the daughter had contrived a marital relationship where the trauma caused by her father would not be recreated. The younger son, and his equally callous disregard for the father (yes, going to a baseball game constitutes as being "too busy" to mourn with your father the passing of your mother), could be explained by this background of the father's alcohol abuse in earlier years. The older son is a bit more of a cypher--he never protests the awful things the daughter does to the parents (she smiles when telling him that they should both bring mourning clothes when visiting their gravely ill mother, obviously fully expecting her to die, which is so creepy), but just goes along almost zombie-like. Such passivity indicates that he may have been equally traumatized by the father's alcohol abuse, but that it manifests itself in non-action rather than malicious action towards his parents, especially his father. Suffice to say, no one was a victim or a villain, even the father, who was probably just an helpless addict. I just found the actions of the three children to be so outside the norm in any decent relationship between child and parent that Tokyo Story was not simply a story of modern life rending a family asunder. Earlier actions by the parents have been carried over and have had subsequent repercussions in the way they're treated by their own children. Which makes for an even more poignant and bitter-sweet ending.

Much has been made of alienation and lack of connectivity in this film: I did not see this at all: I saw only the inevitable separation of children and parents once the offspring have fled the nest and become emroiled in their own upbringing. The human race is the only biological form of life on planet earth where the offspring are expected to take care of of take account of their parents, and this is nver easy. Its not that Shige and Kiochi are negletful children: its just that they are bury, with many demands on their lives, and there is simply no space or frame for their provincial, elderly parents in their lives. Ozu shows this with stark clarity.

Tokyo Story is a poignant film by Ozu on the passing of time, the inevitability of loss,the rift between the generations in terms of expectations,the anxiety about change and mortality, the continual motion of life, the resignation to disappointment.The basic story is of the elderly couple, the Hirayamas, from the provinces visit to their grown-up married children in a busy Tokyo. Koichi, a paediatrician and Shige,a beautician, cannot find time out of their busy schedules, despite promising a trip to the theatre and a day out in Tokyo.Only their widowed daughter-in-law Noriko(Hara) has genuine feelings for them and time to share with them, despite working.Her husband died 8 years before in the war. Their blood children pack them off to Atami, a crowded,noisy spa. Shukishi(Ryu) and Tomi are cool with each other but affectionate.They realize they’d rather go home. Tomi’s morbid musings on mortality come out as she watches her grandson pluck grass blades.She visits Noriko for a night stop -over and is overwhelmed by her generosity urging her to forget her son and move on and remarry. Shukishi decides to look up old drinking buddies and proceeds to get drunk saying how disappointed he is with his children’s lives. Shige is very rude when he returns home drunk with his friend. Shige has got a tongue sharper than a serpents tooth reminding her father of his past drinking habits,her mother of her ‘fatness’,she even begrudges the cakes her husband has bought for her parents. The parents return home but Tomi falls sick and dies.The children now race to be by her sick bed and bicker about who gets her things before racing back to their own self-absorbed lives. The film is a study of the erosion of a family unit and ties with the march of modernity and the pace of the building up of post-war industrial Japan.Although nothing seems to happen there are deep complex emotions beneath the small-talk ,daily rituals,social etiquette. Deep feelings ride on a look,a smile, a sigh,a gulp,a change of tone. Ozu captures perfectly life’s stillness especially between Shukichi and Noriko, their grace, selflessness, acceptance and lack of self pity. Ozu’s shooting style is for tatami camera- positioning,little camera movement bringing out the details of physical spaces.The box shaped rooms are filmed allowing people to enter and exit,there is 180 degree cross-cutting between faces, involving spectators.There are many establishing shots of steam tugs,trains,clotheslines,industrial backdrops. I’m glad I saw the previous films of this trilogy, Late Spring, Early Summer to appreciate what a great screen chemistry developed between Ryu and Hara and how their roles and relationship varies from film to film. And ends this one.Unforgettable.