Word: tokyo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like most Ozu films. "Tokyo Story" is about the increasing contrasts between old and new Japan. And like all Ozu films, the plot is so plain, despite its variety of psychological and emotional levels, that it can be summarized as an anecdote. An old couple leave their home in the port-town of Shimonoseki their children in Tokyo. But there they are intruders in spite of a fond reception, there is no place for them in their children's homes, and they are sent away to vacation at some hot springs resort. The boisterous carryings-on of young people drive...
...some fifty years, they still do not know each other completely; the husband reproaches his wife for sleeping at night when he has been restless, and gets the same pettish reprimand in return. But they seem to grow closer and closer, even during their few days in Tokyo, in the face of a new world and the exclusion from the lives of their children. They reach a perfect unity as they side by side gazing out to sea, lonely misfits at a holiday resort, so attuned that even their kimonos match...
This tranquil resignation is strongly contrasted with the harried, impatient, worrisome lives of their children and grandchildren. One son's profession as neighborhood doctor forces him to neglect his family, the Tokyo daughter is so stingy that she begrudges her parents every bite they eat, while a total lack of traditional calm surfaces in the grandson who throws temper-tantrums whenever he is crossed...
...LIKE A DREAM to be in Tokyo," the grandmother remarks upon arrival. "I never realized it was so close." These words imply how Ozu illustrates the incipient disintegration of the Japanese family system. Tempo, life-style, mood and environment are so different in Tokyo, that the short train trip from their home creates an in surmountable gap for the old people between their customs and the modern ways of their children. The old man looks very uncomfortable and slightly ridiculous in his Western-style travelling suit, and immediately changes into his kimono upon entering his son's house. His wife...
...that are splintering the family--and all of Japanese society. He directs transitions from one locale to another by introducing each new scene with a shot not only symbolic but prolonged to the extent that it almost becomes a still. After the opening scene in Shimonseki, the shift to Tokyo is indicated by the stark image of smokestacks against a smutty sky, and the title "an industrial neighborhood in Tokyo." Setting the mood for each episode with similarly fitting images, Ozu unrolls a cinematic parchment of Japanese prints, the black and white photography of the film heightening its formal links...