Tokyo Story

Before watching this film, I was somewhat reluctant - it is a long slow film about a Japanese family, and I wasn’t sure that I would enjoy it. It’s often the way with things, that those you are looking forward to disappoint you, and those you are dreading turn out not to be so bad after all. And, this film is in fact brilliant. Slow it may be, but that can hardly be said to be a bad thing here. It allows the natures of the characters and their lives to be shown in depth. The film is about an elderly Japanese couple going to visit their adult children in Tokyo, and finding that the children have less time for them than they would perhaps wish.

The film feels, in many ways, very minimalist. Almost every shot is static, and by and large, they are at the eye level of a person sat on the floor in the traditional Japanese manner. The scenes are, in general, not overly emotional in the way that I would expect of a film with these films. Everything is understated - the interactions between the characters are not necessarily out of the ordinary, but the generational rift in the family is apparent anyway. Between the scenes of family life, there are beautiful shots of Japan - city scenes, trains, and countryside.

All in all, this is a film that can only be described as beautiful. It is heart warming and heart breaking in equal measure in its quietness.