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Tokyo Story - Criterion Collection Actors: Chishu Ryu, Chieko Higashiyama, Sô Yamamura Director: Yasujiro Ozu Number of Items: 2 Picture Format: Academy Ratio Format: Black & White, Color Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Running Time: 135 minutes Studio: Criterion Collection Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Region Code: 1 Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2003-10-28 Buy from Amazon |
 "A Quiet masterpiece"This film was held back from international distribution for many years because it was thought to be too "Japanese". It's hard to imagine why. The story is immediately engrossing and keeps you rivetted from start to finish. It's not Seven Samurai or Yojimbo, but a simple tale of an elderly couple travelling to Tokyo to see their children. What results is disappointment and resentment masked by plastic smiles , false pleasantries and rigid formality. The parents are disappointed in the children, and the children resent the parents. There are no intense moments of melodrama or intriguing plot twists to entertain the viewer. Worlds of pain and suffering are revealed through a few words here or there, or through subtle body language. The film is beautifully photographed with a minimal amount of camera movement (if there is any at all), and is well preserved by Criterion. It may not be the best restoration ever, but it's superior to the infamous Ran transfers, and hardly noticeable when the film carries you away. The entire cast is wonderful, varying from polite inoffensive formality of the elderly couple, the businesslike, obligatory courtesy of the children, and carefree lack of pretentiousness of the grandchildren. The characters are so realistic that you may be reminded of friends or family. Standing out are Chishu Ryu as the father and Setsuko Hara as the widow of Ryu's deceased son. Hara spends most of her film time bearing the most artificial and forced smiles, almost annoyingly, until the end with her scene with Ryu in which years of concealed heartbreak finally come to the surface. It is simple to the point of understatement, and quite memorable. Ozu, one of the most neglected artists in the West, shows himself here to be one of the great directors of all time in this universal tale of deception and honesty. I'm not going to throw away Kurosawa, but I will let him set on the back-burner for a while so i can explore the new and soon to be released works of this Quiet Master of cinema. "Subtle, Powerful, * * * * * *"To appreciate this movie, keep in mind while watching it that traditional Japanese behavior is to restrict expressing your own opinion. Japanese people do not say, "do you want to..."; instead, they say, "will you...?" Because of this, you must pay really close attention to the words and actions of others to discover how they are really feeling. Try to put yourself into the shoes of each person in this film, and you will feel enlightened when the movie is over. This movie is about a kind old couple who take a trip to visit their grown children in a big city across the country. However, they soon get the feeling that they are imposing on their children's lives, and do all they can to keep out of the way. Eventually they leave for home, but the old woman grows gravely ill along the way. That is only the outward-facing plot of the movie. The movie is really about priorities (culture and peace of mind versus your own self-interests), relationships, and loyalty. A word of warning: this is a kleenex movie! "All-Time Classic"Ozu's 1953 "Tokyo Story" is about as perfect as any film ever made. It's a veritable masterpiece of cinema. If only twenty films of the past 100 years could be saved for the future, then Tokyo Story must be one of them. There's too many reasons why this film is so wonderful for me to go into here. Others are more up to the task of explaining its many little touches and charms. I will only say that this is a wonderfully warm, human, touching story filmed as good as any movie ever made. This one is definately "up there"! The DVD isn't as clean a transfer as with others of the Criterion Collection, and I assume it's because the original negative is unusable or lost? Perhaps this is the best print to have survived? It's hard to say. The soundtrack is in mono and the film is presented in a fullscreen 1.33:1 aspect-ratio in true black & white. There's a great commentary track to listen to as well, and with all of Ozu's films I would strongly suggest listening to the commentaries to fully understand and appreciate the brilliant film methods of Ozu the master. What's not to love about "Tokyo Story"? The characters are so real and so complex, just like we are. The story is always believable and never over-melodramatic like a bad Disney film. The emotions we feel are sincere ones and Tokyo Story doesn't make demands on our emotional reaction to the film, but rather we slowly find ourselves volunteering our emotional reactions freely. That is the mark of a brilliant film. "How Do You Feel About Your Family?"I agree with the positive reviewers who have taken such great and personal pleasure in this movie. Ozu's style indeed seems restrained to 21st century American audiences, used to quick cuts and characters who can be summed up by their catch phrases. Here instead we are in a world more like a Jane Austen novel, focused on a few isolated characters and how they interact with each other. Only slowly do you realize the disappointment the central couple has in their adult children. The restraint of their emotions and the style of the film is what makes the viewer's increasing emotional awareness so much more powerful. Ozu shows how people can outwardly meet all societal expectations and obligations and yet remain oblivious to the needs of those they should be close to and "real" with. It's curious how other reviewers draw the moral that we all should, as Pete Seeger used to sing, "be kind to your parents, though they don't deserve it." This is a recurring theme with Ozu, what adult children owe their parents. I have had so many friends have parents visit from out of town and treat that visit with a kind of dread. So many of us think of family as being like fish -- starts to go bad after three days. Let's not forget that many of Ozu's films turn on the theme of parents pushing their adult children to live their own lives and stop making sacrifices for the parents. If only there was an American Ozu to make a version of this movie about our contemporary culture. It would never be from the point of the view of the older people. I think that is part of the loss that people sense watching this movie -- that we have lost something ourselves by closing ourselves off from our parents, whatever our reasons might be.  "Extremely boring"This 1953 film is absolutely one of the most boring movies of all time. Admittedly I'm not a real film critic, and I often look for entertainment in a film, but I do like independent and foreign films a lot because they often provide a more humanistic perspective than the junk out of Hollywood where producers care nothing for you and me but only big bucks. But to call "Tokyo Story" one of the best films of all time is a total insult to the many, many much, much better movies and filmmakers out there. The story can touch the human heart, but the presentation is excruciatingly slow and boring and you'll feel like pulling your hair out after the first 20 minutes. In the end it just feels pretentious. A much better Japanese movie from that era was this one about the Hiroshima atomic bomb. This, on the other hand, is a torture to watch and only appeals to a limited audience. |
