Tokyo Story (1953)

 Yasujiro Ozu's "Tokyo Story"

The first time I had seen Yasujiro Ozu's 1953 film "Tokyo Story" was when I was in my mid-to-late twenties. I remember not liking the film, finding it too boring and unengaging. It was the first Ozu film I had ever seen and it really turned me off to watching any more, frankly. When I revisited Ozu, I started his filmography in order, first watching his 1932 film "I Was Born, but..." To say the least, I was completely captivated and the film felt like an emotional gut punch. I had finally understood Ozu and his style. I felt similarly in all his subsequent films, as though I were watching something completely integrated into my own emotional life. His films are so domestic, so real, and such a mirror to own own complex relationships, that his films almost feels like life itself. So, when I finally sat down to re-visit "Tokyo Story," I felt as though I were finally ready to receive it with reverence. Sufficive to say, "Tokyo Story" was a far different film from when I first watched it. In fact, since watching, I have not been able to get its stinging imagery and palpable emotion out of my head for days. 

"Tokyo Story" tells the story of an elderly married couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their grown children and their grandchildren. However, while there, they seem to become a burden to their children, who are so engrained in their career and the fast-pace modern life in post-war Japan. Feeling disconnected, the elderly couple go back home, only for the mother to pass away. The children arrive to grieve, some of them seemingly only staying for the day and taking belongings with them when they go. Noriko, the widowed wife of their deceased son, was the only one who was nice and kind to them, according to the father. They share a moment of emotional connection until she finally has to leave him behind to return to Tokyo.

Ozu clearly has a signature style, something he employs in every single film he does. His attention to space, to ambiance, and to the stillness of domestic life makes you feel as though you were in those spaces yourself. As if those spaces are the same spaces you occupy everyday in your own domestic life. The way he shoots his subjects face-on in conversations with the subjects looking directly at the camera make you feel as though you are right in the middle of the conversation. Every decision Ozu makes employs a feeling of familiarity. 

Because of this familiarity, watching an Ozu film feels like watching a slice of your own life. You begin to see the relationships on screen as inseparable from own personal relationships. I know that many people will take away "start being nicer to your grandparents" as the main thematic point of the film. While this may be something to take away, I feel as though the general point of the film isn't this specifically. Rather, I feel as though Ozu is making a far more melancholic observation. That observation being that families and all personal relationships all dissipate, either intentionally or unintentionally. People grow apart, life gets in the way, and the modern business of life always forces material pursuits in favor of emotional pursuits. It's a film about the sadness in life that extends from human relationships crumbling, communication breaking down, loved ones simply drifting apart. 

There are obvious parallels to Leo McCarey's 1937 film "Make Way for Tomorrow," which has an incredibly similar storyline. When I reflect on "Make Way for Tomorrow," the image comes to mind of the elderly couple, two 19th century youths suddenly in a 20th century future. The image of them does not fit in with the new modern world. They become a burden to their children and a burden to society itself. Similarly with "Tokyo Story," the new post-war industrial landscape does not completely allow for their more traditionalist aesthetic. The characters are a a world leaving them behind. Even being left behind by their own children. A think one of the more melancholic aspects of the theme is that everyone will get left behind. Society is an industry using people for parts. Parts grow old and get replaced. And yet the machine of existence will continue to churn along. I think the image that best incorporates this theme is Ozu's shots of smokestacks and city landscapes. These images perfectly incapsulate the industrial mechanisms at play, the continuous cycle of life that progresses before your eyes, rendering you obsolete in the new and improving world. I think this sentiment was ever-present in post-war Japan at that time. Ozu continuously makes reference to it in his other films. The Westernization of post-war Japan created so much generational division that it began to break apart the traditional foundations of an entire country. Ozu and this breathtaking film do such a great job of encapsulating the growing weariness of the older generation in having to watch the entire fabric of everything they've come to know change before them in the blink of an eye. 

With this thematic point, the sullen realization of your own inability to completely connect with those closest to you starts to occupy the mind. The film transitions from a piece of art to something real and personal. "Tokyo Story" is a film brimming with the utter sadness of life. Of the complicated and busy world coming into focus. Of people moving on with their lives. How you get left behind in that process. It's devastating. It's melancholic. It's simply the pain of living. The pain of family. The pain of regret.