021 - Tokyo Story, 1953, Japan; Dir. Yasujiro Ozu.

Saturday, January 21, 2017

021 - Tokyo Story, 1953, Japan. Dir. Yasujiro Ozu.

We have talked about "every frame a Rembrandt" and "every frame a Vermeer."

How about "every frame an Ansel Adams."

I do not know if Adams is the precisely the right photographer to use, but he is the one I know.  There is something about the black-and-white cinematography of Yuharu Atsuta that I cannot explain, but it is just right.  The blacks are blacks, the whites are white, the grays are gray, and the lines are sharp.  Very sharp.

The framing also seems just right in just about every shot.  Imagine having to decide where to place the camera.  Some filmmakers place it wherever.  Some use math.  Some use intuition.  Some are sloppy.  Some are super precise.  Atsuta finds the sweet spot.  The sweetest of sweet spots.

Everything about his compositions looks right.

The camera is where it should be.  The actors are where they should be.  The landscapes and buildings are where they should be.

The camera so often seems to be just a few feet above the floor, but looking straight ahead, as if at people's waists or above their knees.  It is as though we are sitting down as they do.  When he uses close-ups, the actors look so much more closely towards the camera that it is almost as though they are looking in it.

It is a strange thing watching this film.  It is as though you have spent your life around college-level and professional artists, and then suddenly you meet a master.

And you wonder what you were doing before.  And where has he been?  And why were you not with him all along?

And is this really 1953?  It feels so contemporary.

Tokyo story is about a beautiful, warm, older couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their children and grandchildren, who are in turn too busy for them.

They live in a town in Japan name Onomichi.  They have four children and two grandchildren.  Their youngest daughter, Kyoko, lives with them.  Their youngest son, Keizo, lives in Osaka.  But their oldest son and daughter, Koichi and Shige, live in Tokyo, and it is they whom they are going to visit.

They also had a fifth child, a middle son Shoji.  He has been MIA for 8 years from the War.  His presumed widow, their daughter-in-law Noriko, also lives in Tokyo, and they will visit her as well.

The film will find the children busy, too busy for their parents, and the parents politely adjusting.  Their oldest son Koichi is about to take them out on a Sunday, but he is a pediatrician and has an emergency case come up, so they stay in.

The oldest daughter Shige runs the Ooh La La Beauty Parlor, and she is busy cutting hair and having meetings.  When her parents pass through the salon and someone inquires about them, she tells them they are just some people she knows.  She does not even acknowledge that they are her parents.

They visit Noriko.  She, the daughter-in-law, is the kindest to them.

The two older children send them to a spa at a hot springs to get them out of the way.  They do not fit in.  They come back.

The father meets up with some old friends and they go out and get drunk.  The mother goes back to Noriko's house and they talk about her missing husband.  The mother encourages her to let him go and to remarry.

They feel that they are in the way, so they decide to go home.  They make it to Osaka and must leave the train because the mother is ill.  They get to see their youngest son, Keizo, but he is busy also.

When they arrive home, the mother will die, and this time all of the children will come and visit them.  Everyone will regret that they did not spent more time together.

Tokyo Story does not dwell in emotion.  It presents life as it is.  People marry and have children.  The children grow up and marry and have children.  The adult children grow away from their parents.

There is no judgment in it, and no pulling of the heartstrings--just telling the story.

The performances are superb.  The actors work in control and restraint.  They say one thing when they mean another, and we understand what they mean.

This is a beautiful movie to watch.  The pacing is also just right.  The characters are true--people with depth, layers, people who speak such simple, polite, appropriate things but who have a sea of feeling underneath.

Tokyo Story moves not like the train they take from Onomichi to Japan, but like the river that crawls outside their house in Tokyo, sitting there, being, moving like life, ever steadily to the sea.