Crepuscolo di Tokyo

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 deeply, uncharacteristically dark film, even among other "dark" Ozu films (i.e. A HEN IN THE WIND, EARLY SPRING) that may require a theatrical setting for the viewer to be fully absorbed in the strange, dark textures of the world Ozu presents. I myself was pretty alienated for the first 1/2 hour or so until the wintry chill of the mise-en-scene (brilliantly suggested in the slightly hunched-over postures of the characters) found its way into me instead of keeping me at arm's length. And from there this story builds in unwavering intensity as it follows a family on a slow slide into dissolution: a passive, judgmental patriarch (played by Chisyu Ryu, subverting his gently accepting persona in a way that is shocking), his elder daughter, a divorcee with a single child (Setsuko Hara, playing brilliantly against type -- who'd have thought the sweetest lady in '50s Japan had such an evil scowl?), and his younger daughter (Ineko Arima, a revelation), secretly pregnant and searching for her boyfriend, get a major shakeup when their absent mother, who the father had told them was long dead, re-enters their lives. Ozu's vision of post-war Japan and how the sins of one generation get passed on to the next, illustrated brilliantly by a series of parallels drawn sensitively between characters, manages to be both compassionate and scathing -- even a seemingly cop-out happy denouement is embedded with a poison pill. A masterpiece, without question, one that throws all of Ozu's depictions of modern society in a beautifully devastating new light.

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?

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).