I rewatched Tokyo Story over the last couple of nights, and I may re-watch it again. Yes, I'm supposed to be packing and I'm watching slow Yasujiro Ozu films. I have to feel like I'm doing something intellectually, or I'd be even more depressed than I already am, so there ya have it.
The director commentary on the standard/Blu-Ray double release by criterion is, as one might expect, incredible. There is a tracking shot, which struck me as completely revolutionary for him. Haha. He wasn't quite as strict in his formalism as I thought. Apparently his shot lengths aren't that long either, which the commentator thought would surprise Ozu followers. I would certainly have guessed they'd be longer. It's strange. Ozu films aren't difficult because of shot length (at least Tokyo Story), but because of subject matter and nuance. Very neorealist in their scope, they deal with simple stories about family, and seasons, and nuclear Japanese life.
Touching on an issue close to my heart, the film deals with a fragmented family (mine from divorce and previous marriages), theirs from marriages and death, and the dysfunction of a family in the modern age; the family spend little time together and have little desire to do so.
I found the film much subtler in its exploration of this theme, but commentator David Desser expresses the actions of the family that makes excuses not to interact or be burdened with their visiting family as much more integral and a conscious part of their psyche. Hearing his exposition made the story disturbing - do we really care about each other that little? Our own flesh and blood, the closest to our own genetics, the first we'd protect aside from ourselves, the most common recipient of our own reciprocal altruism?
Again, this is an issue close to my heart, and more complicated than I'm making it seem.
The story involves an adage, or trope, or simple literary device which I won't go into here (as it would require spoiler alerts), but which make the story ring with a clarion call; care about those you should (I'd argue that it runs a broad humanist, altruistic gamut in which we should try to care about everyone)!
Upon watching the film all the way through for the second time, it was painfully clear that this film should be able to, like the amplifier in Spinal Tap, go to 11. Anyway. Adieu.
The Last Films I've Seen
1. Tokyo Story, 1953, Ozu; 10.0.
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