Neither, evidently, did most Japanese film personnel; Mark Schilling\u2019s biography on studio executive Shiro Kido notes that Ozu\u2019s picture wasn\u2019t submitted to the 1954 Cannes Film Festival. Like much of this director\u2019s output, Tokyo Story<\/em>\u2014which follows an elderly couple visiting their grown children during a trip to Japan\u2019s capital\u2014is a work of quiet minimalism. The characters lead basic, unextraordinary lives. The acting is rigorous and restrained. Melodramatic storytelling tactics ordinarily taken for granted are tossed aside (the mother becomes terminally ill in the third act, but her actual passing occurs off-screen; a widowed daughter-in-law is encouraged to remarry, but no man enters her life by drama\u2019s end). All supervised by a camera situated low to the floor and often locked in place\u2014tracking twice in 136 minutes and not once tilting, panning, or zooming. In the 1950s, Hollywood films dominated the global market, and the handful of Japanese features to gain overseas attention consisted of elaborate period dramas. A picture so simple, so simply filmed, so \u201cJapanese\u201d seemed alien.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet, whenever Tokyo Story <\/em>was shown abroad\u2014especially in the wake of early-\u201870s New York screenings\u2014spectators who knew little to nothing about Japan were moved to tears. \u201cWe speak so casually of film \u2018classics,\u2019\u201d wrote Roger Ebert in 1972<\/a>, \u201cthat it is a little moving to find one that has survived 20 years of neglect, only to win Western critical acclaim nine years after the director’s death.\u201d Like many Ozu gems, it is an honest depiction of the joys, sorrows, and disappointments of everyday life, and the characters\u2014as well as the tribulations they endure\u2014are ones audiences, regardless of race and culture, see in themselves and people they\u2019ve known. Tokyo Story<\/em> depicts the emotional disconnect between families, through children who\u2019ve left the nest, settled into their own routines, and distanced themselves from aging parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The film begins with Shukichi (Chishu Ryu) and Tomi (Chieko Higashiyama) journeying to the capital to visit their eldest son (So Yamamura) and daughter (Haruko Sugimura). There, they are greeted impersonally: by grandkids with no desire to socialize, and by a grown middle generation unable\u2014or unwilling\u2014to make time for family. The couple\u2019s son, a neighborhood doctor, is preoccupied with patients; their daughter, a hairdresser, sees her progenitors as a nuisance, dismissing them to a client as \u201cfriends from the country.\u201d She even sends the couple to a neighboring city claiming they\u2019ll enjoy the hot springs\u2014only to admonish them for returning early and disrupting her social plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The only receptive family member is Noriko, the widow of a son killed in World War II. Played by the luminous Setsuko Hara, Noriko takes a day off work to escort her in-laws around town and even houses Tomi when the latter refuses to impose on blood relatives who don\u2019t want her around. Following Tomi\u2019s death, the biological children respond by claiming their favorite possessions of hers and that same day hurrying home. (One even makes the excuse that he can\u2019t stay due to a baseball match.) By contrast, Noriko\u2014the non-blood relative\u2014remains behind as long as she can. In return for her kindness, Shukichi grants her Tomi\u2019s watch, an item never confiscated, as a keepsake. Meanwhile, the youngest daughter, Kyoko (Kyoko Kagawa), who\u2019s unmarried and still lives at home, regards her siblings\u2019 selfishness with disgust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, Ozu doesn\u2019t demonize the children, taking care to note the complications of their adult lives; a second grown son, from Osaka, even breaks down after realizing his taking a later train cost him the chance to say goodbye to his mother. Nor does the director deify the parents. In one key sequence, Shukichi, a former alcoholic, reunites with former drinking buddies. As they soften their minds with liquor, the seemingly proud father confesses to being disappointed with his eldest son\u2014as he\u2019s only a small-town doctor, not someone \u201cimportant.\u201d Shukichi eventually barges into his daughter\u2019s home, totally inebriated, at which point the daughter recalls unhappy childhood incidents wherein her father\u2019s drunkenness left Tomi depressed. Even Noriko, by her own admission, isn\u2019t perfect: she suspects she\u2019ll one day succumb to selfishness and become distanced from her family. \u201cIsn\u2019t life disappointing?\u201d Kyoko remarks in light of this prediction. To which her sister-in-law replies, \u201cYes, it is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2012, after Tokyo Story<\/em> topped the aforementioned Sight and Sound <\/em>poll, features editor James Bell labeled Ozu\u2019s masterpiece<\/a> \u201ca recognition of the fact that sometimes the most powerful films seem at first to be the simplest.\u201d This summation is beautifully captured in the picture\u2019s denouement. Noriko returns to the capital, Kyoko leaves for work, and Shukichi\u2014now totally alone\u2014sits in his house while the goings-on of daily life unfold outside. A great many Ozu pictures close on similar images, and the emotions they stir point up what\u2019s made him one of cinema\u2019s most universal storytellers. His characters aren\u2019t dynamic individuals enduring complicated events; they\u2019re ordinary citizens whose experiences are known the world over and thus remind us of reality. Children forge their own paths; families grow apart; the elderly pass away; and for those left behind, life goes on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Tokyo Story” is streaming on Max<\/a>, the Criterion Channel,<\/a> Kanopy<\/a>, and Tubi<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/tokyo-story2-1024x768.jpeg\")
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