Tôkyô boshoku

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.

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?

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.

Two sisters, Takako (Setsuko Hara), who is estranged from her husband, and Akiko (Ineko Arima), who is starting to 'run wild', live with their father Shukichi (Chishu Ryu), whose wife deserted him for another man when the girls were young children. The film is a typical Yasujiro Ozu family drama - melancholy, compelling and beautifully filmed. Similar to many of the auteur's other films, the story focuses on the breakdown of a Japanese family but rather than being due to transgenerational changes in attitudes and culture, the breakdown in 'Tokyo Twilight' is ignited by poor judgement and bad personal decisions. I found the resolution of Akiko's story a bit had to reconcile with the images on screen (but this may be due to Ozu's tendency to jump forward and leave it to the viewers to imagine the unseen events). Recommended (even if I remain unsure as to why I enjoy Ozu's films so much).

A fairly dark story for Ozu, but you know what? I think that shows Ozu can do just a little different than what everyone expects of him. The ingredients of this stuff isn't just melodrama, it's soap opera - disappointed father, absentee mother, an abortion, and a closed off young woman who doesn't know what to do with herself, certainly not around the deadbeat man in her life. But it's how Ozu goes about - I felt deeply for this family since it builds from a place that just feels real - and awkward in its reality. I think in many of Ozu's films the kind of nice-ness people have to one another (I don't know if this is just in Japan or just elsewhere) is a cover for what they really think and feel.

A lot of what is in the early parts of Ozu films are mundane, just pleasantries, making tea, talking some minor gossip or 'how was your day' stuff. But then it goes into some areas that are much darker, or just can't be seen by the surface of the rituals of Japanese familial ties and relations. And in this film Ozu really made it a point that this family is torn by secrets and lies, and it's so under the surface that it becomes palpable. And there's a noirish quality here that works interestingly, as the sister Akika stews away with her secret in a bar, and doesn't even know the bigger secret about her birthright (and a tinny song Ozu plays often in the film, even in the most tragic scenes, adds a whole other level of the familiar but sadness).

I was touched by Tokyo Twilight, and it wasn't a sudden effect - it came over me gradually, like an old friend coming by and then finding out through a long and staggering conversation what hard times there have been. It's tragedy in full dimensions