Crepúsculo de Tokio

This is my fifth Ozu film. And as I watch more of his movies my respect for his genius keeps on growing. He is more avant-garde than any other film maker I have seen.

While others use wars as backdrop to create a more touching drama, wars just find a small reference in his films even if his characters have lived through them. While other use death as a dramatic pivot for the whole movie, Ozu skips it altogether. People do die in his films, but they do it off screen. There are no famous last dialogs about life or last moments.

But despite these things or maybe because of these things, his movies are more poignant and touching than any other I have seen. I don't really cry while watching his movies. Instead they leave me in a strange tranquil state of mind, wistfully smiling.

Another thing to note is that while his movies reveal more about Japanese culture than any other movies I have seen, at the same time they are very universal.

If you haven't seen any movie by Yasujiro Ozu, I recommend starting with Tokyo Story or Good Morning. This one seems much longer as it takes some time to start and is devoid of humor. This is not meant as a criticism, Tokyo Twilight is still an amazing experience. But I think an average viewer should start with something else.

Generally considered to be Ozu's bleakest film which is, perhaps, why it's often placed behind "Tokyo Story" and "Late Spring", funnier and gentler if not less powerful works , in this director's canon. I would agree with this assessment and ranking although it's a bit like saying "The Possessed" is Doestoevsky's third best novel. I mean it's still a shattering experience that stays with you long after you've finished it and demands to be re-visited. I would especially like again to view the character of the loving but strangely passive mom who walks out on her marriage and kids but wants and expects immediate forgiveness from her children. Ozu and his co scenarist Kogo Noda's treatment of her is amazingly good, bringing out both the monstrousness and humanity of this person so that you are both appalled by and sympathetic toward her. And the downward spiral of Akiko, which in the hands of a lesser director would descend the tear jerking path, is looked at with compassion tempered with a rather cold eyed realism in the scenes at the police station and the abortion clinic. And Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara, re-enacting the father/daughter relationship of "Late Spring" but with the interesting difference that Hara's character is married but separated, meet on a more equal plane of maturity, in my opinion, than in the earlier work that makes their scenes together fuller and less sentimental. So while your tear ducts are drier your mind is more engaged. And, come to think of it, maybe that's another reason why this film has been unjustly neglected, at least in the West. Give it an A.

Ozu's stock company runs through variations on their unhappy yet loyal relationships to each other: Chishû Ryû as the father who tried his best and failed; Setsuko Hara as the seemingly obedient daughter, and so forth; the middle class home; the little bar around the office. It's all there and all as familiar as the nail's level view -- a bent-down nail, because the nail that sticks up gets hammered down.

We're told that Ozu is very Japanese and I wouldn't understand, but I find his world very familiar, even if everyone speaks Japanese. Growing up, I didn't understand Yiddish -- I still don't -- but my parents and uncles and aunts did and held conversation in it when they didn't want us to understand. Sometimes the discussions would escalate to shouting, and when I would ask what was going on, I would be told "You wouldn't understand." I understood they were unhappy, and for a child, there's nothing more frightening.

So that's what Ozu seems like to me: the same people, the same problems, the same language so I wouldn't understand -- but with subtitles. With the same cast, just like my family. As Wayne said to Howard Hawks, this time, can I play the drunk?

Yasujiro Ozu's 1957 family drama is probably his darkest & bleakest yet w/the story of a family coming apart at the seams. A father, played by Chishu Ryu (who usually would play the paterfamilias in Ozu's films), lives w/his 2 daughters, Setsuko Hara & Ineko Arima & they're not the happiest sort. Arima is studying English to become a shorthand steno while Hara, who has left her husband, has brought her daughter along to stay in the home while Ryu whiles away his days away as a banker. Arima spends her time chasing after a college student but after they hook up & she gets pregnant, he disappears. Not knowing if she'll go through w/an abortion, she spends time hanging out at a mahjong parlor where the proprietress seems to know her since she mentions she knows Hara & details of the village from they came from. It turns out the woman is in fact the girls' mother (she left Ryu during the war for another man, the same one she runs the business with) which is confirmed by a friend of the family on a visit to Ryu's home. After the abortion, Arima soon gets the news about her mother & seeing her life appears to be heading towards a dead end (after her beau pops up out of the blue), she tries to commit suicide by stepping in front of a passing train where she's rushed to a hospital w/injuries. As the plot cards are fully lain on the cinematic table, the family has to come to grips w/where their lives are now & whether to lick their collective wounds & continue living. It's nice seeing Ozu plowing territory that someone like Ingmar Bergman would make his career on but yet again, even though this is a film replete w/disappointments, they are quiet, subdued & sometime not even mentioned. Look for Kamatari Fujiwara (from Seven Samurai where he played the duplicitous Manzo) as a noodle salesman.

A two grown up sisters living with their single father, find out they have a mother who abounded them years ago. Feelings of hostile and anger, goes around them both. Another masterful filmmaking by Ozu, through family and loneliness, abandonment and anger, fulfill this piece. Setsuko Hara and Chishû Ryû, stunning as usual. A little different Ozu film in many ways, here we have a lot of darkness and hardness around family and family members. A masterpiece.