Tokyo Story (U)
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Yasujiro Ozu's portrait of familial relations, first seen in 1953, is marked by an indefinable melancholy that settles on the frame as softly as snow.
His calm, decorous, low-level camera tends to sit still, pausing in empty interiors and catching life on the hoof (trains, boats) so elegantly that one might think he's less interested in people than in spaces. Yet people – their feelings, their self-deceptions and shortcomings – are absolutely central to him.
The story of this film is simple: an elderly couple arrive from the provinces to visit their married children in Tokyo. It is their first visit in a long time (they have never met their grandchildren) yet the son and daughter they've come to see are too busy to play host, and pack them off to a nearby spa. Strangely, the one person who treats them in a kindly and filial way is their daughter-in-law (the great Setsuko Hara), who married their middle son and was widowed during the war.
The old couple, disappointed but uncomplaining of their treatment, take the train back home; on a stopover they discuss what's happened to their children: it amounts to a buried lament for a generation's loss of respect and affection for their parents. Then a sudden death breaks on the family, and a sad reckoning ensues.
The unshowy tenderness of this is like no other film-maker's: his actors don't seem to be acting at all, they're just living. Ozu only has to train his camera on a face to uncover a sense of resignation, or longing, or loneliness, and the mood, if you allow it, becomes quite overwhelming. Tokyo Story opens a retrospective of Ozu at the British Film Institute, and if you haven't seen it, go now.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments