Tokyo Story

I love this film more than I can express. There is nothing so tender, so bitter, or so human in the annals of cinema. The fact that such a film can carry a degree of depth as immense as this, that something so simplistic can be so incredibly layered and nuanced, is a testament to the beauty, complexity, and quiet struggle of the human plight. Not a character, not a scene, not a line of dialogue is wasted in this film. Everyone, everything, is shown with this weightily tragic empathy, such as only Ozu could do. It is beauty beyond beauty, a product of its time and a product of eternity, a product of contemporary post-war Japan, and a product of mankind itself. And stylistically, this film is flawless. I don’t believe I can think of a film better framed than this. Simple compositions rendered visual poetry through the blocking and the staging, with a typically familiar Ozuian emphasis on domesticity through the mise en scène, whether it be the framing methods, or the foregrounded props. The editing is the absolute pinnacle of Ozu, and subsequently of cinema, the ever-familiar one-hundred and eighty degree rule breaking shot-reverse-shots, the tone-setting pillow shots and the choices in shot selection having a subtlety which massively accommodates the mood of the film. Setsuko Hara, Chisū Ryū, and Chieko Higashiyama all give performances not merely career-defining, but cinema-defining, not to mention the beautiful score. This is a perfect film; a story so rich, so human, so simple, that it transcends nations, time, and art itself; stylistic perfection - subtle, though intensely evocative; unadorned, though mature and rich. This is cinema at its best. Ozu, the humble ‘tofu-maker’ crafts something indicative of the very concept of art itself. It warms my heart even to think of this film, never mind to watch it.