The Sadness of Those Who Remember:
A Review of Tokyo Story

November 12, 2006

Not often that I see a film which I can immediately classify as one of my all-time favorite films. Ozu is a conservative film maker.. keeping his camera still, using medium distance shots, and building characters through inconsequential dialogue.. nothing fancy there.

Tokyo Story resembles King Lear as it focuses on the reception of aging parents by their children, who mostly live in Tokyo. Their visit is treated as an inconvenience, and they are mostly shunted aside.. with the notable exception of a woman who had married their son—who had died eight years earlier in World War II. She had remained single, and when her step parents arrive in Tokyo, we see her make small sacrifices in order to be with them. Her kindness makes the coldness of the actual children show up plainly. Shortly after the parents return home to the small city which was their home, the mother dies.. and all the children gather, their recent actions fresh in their minds.

While the plot puts King Lear in mind, we are not treated to any hysterics or shouting in the midst of a storm. Still the dark bitterness creeps in. It is agreed: life is a disappointment. The statement comes and goes.. but it describes a settled and firm view of the world. At the end of the film when a small emotional tempest threatens.. one of the surviving daughters gives voice to anger at the treatment given her parents by her siblings. And the woman whose kindness brightens the film calms that anger and explains how people change.. that those children are not bad.. just people with their own lives to live.

What about this woman, though? She gains the admiration of the audience for her devotion to parents which are not even truly her parents. It is filial piety above and beyond any duty. She is the good one, but also the saddest since she does not have her own life. Ozu seems here to be at his darkest. Generations falls away from each other.. becoming indifferent to those who raised them.. but the lone person who exemplifies the way memory can bind together these generations.. she is the very one who cannot get on and live. Memory is beautiful, but forgetfulness is the stuff of life.