Tokyo Story

I was on the verge of tears for the entire run-time, from the opening credits to the end credits. To be honest, I lost count of the amount of times I shed tears. I don’t even know if it was justified half the time but my eyes welled at everything in this film. Even things like some of the pillow shots or the Grandfather and his mates going on a bender together and getting shouted at for coming home to his daughter late and drunk caused me to weep. Some day I’ll write the review I want to for this film, but the sheer love for modest humanity it instils in me means my emotions are too subject to it’s whims to be able to write one coherently enough. Tokyo Story is probably the single most important film I have watched for me as an individual. Ozu taught me if anything, that it is okay to be human, that it is okay to ache and to yearn and to hurt, that it is okay to be conceited and to lapse in compassion, that it is okay when you look back and feel it never quite became what you wanted it to be, that it is okay when you didn’t realise what you had until you no longer have it. After all, isn’t life disappointing?