98. TOKYO STORY

GENERATIONAL GAP

By Darin Skaggs

SPOILERS!

     They say you never know what you got until it’s gone.  You can never really appreciate something and especially someone until they are no longer in your life.  Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story takes that idea and runs with that feeling through a two and half hour film. 

     The film is about an older couple that are going to visit there adult children.  At the beginning they are excited to see their children, which make you feel happy for them.  The kids on the other hand do not seem too excited, they are busy with work and their own children to even plan well for their parents trip.  The parents arrive and try to have a good time, but they are left at home to wait and sometimes just go out on their own.  A week passes and it is time for them to go back.  They are unsatisfied with the trip.  The mother starts to mention that she does not feel well.  Then sometime on their way back the mother dies.  The rest of the film is spent trying to get over the guilt of not appreciating their mom.

     The film is genius by just setting up the relationship of the parents and their children.  There is no build up to the mother’s death.  The first half of the film is interactions between the family.  When the scene is a parent with one or more of the children, they are trying to have a good time, but when it is just the children interacting they complain about the parents.  This is strange and awkward to watch, this family is not really falling apart but just going through the motions.  Though without these scenes, the film does not get its payoff with the finale. 

     By the time the parents leave the older children are relieved, the youngest is left empty handed and the parents hold nothing but disappointment.  Then just like life the unexpected happens.  Their mother is gone.  She has passed away, you feel the sadness and the fact they know they could never talk to their mom again and say sorry for treating her poorly or say how much she meant to them.  These characters are the same from before; the only thing that has changed is that they are filled with more regret.

     One of the most effective and moving scenes comes near the end with the father.  He has returned home after the funeral.  The entire movie he has never shown emotion and not let people know that something has bothered him, even to his wife to some extent.  Until the last scene where a neighbor comes and sees how he is holding up after his wife’s funeral.  He says he’ll be fine and that it will be lonelier, but saying it with his regular expression.  Then the neighbor bids him farewell and walks off.  The father then, for the first time as long as we have known him, looks down and gives the slightest frown.  This conversation and small facial movement is so telling of what this man has gone through and how much of his emotion he has been hiding for his family.

     This film is all about family; what makes them good and what can make them bad.  It is a film that makes you pick up the phone seconds after it finishes and call your mom or someone in your family.  It’s one of the most heartbreaking tales in the history of cinema.  It will keep you thinking long after the film ends.